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Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG WOMAN'S GUIDE ***
by
William A. Alcott
[Illustration: Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease and
alternate labour, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving
Heaven! Thomson]
PREFACE.
This work was begun, soon after the appearance of the Young Man's
Guide--and was partially announced to the public. For reasons, however,
which I have not room to give in this place, it was thought proper to
defer its publication till the appearance of several other volumes in
the same spirit, involving more particularly the relative duties.
Permit me, however, to say, that while I have not intended to follow
the path, or repeat the ideas of any other writer, I have not attempted
to avoid either the one or the other. If I have presented here and
there a thought which had already come before the public from my own
pen, I can only say that I did not intend it, although I did not take
special pains to avoid it. The sum is this. I have presented my
thoughts, without so much reference to what has already been said by
myself or others, as to what I have supposed to be the necessities of
those for whom I write. I have gone straight forward, asking no
questions; and I trust I shall be dealt with in a manner equally
direct.
CONTENTS.
Defining terms. The word excellence here used as nearly synonymous with
holiness. What is meant by calling the work a Guide. The term Woman--
why preferable, as a general term, to Lady. The class to whom this work
is best adapted.
CHAPTER V. SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
CHAPTER X. SELF-DEPENDENCE.
Why woman has invented so few things. Abundant room for the exercise of
her inventive powers. Hints. Particular need of a reform in cookery.
Appeal to young women on this subject.
Advice of Dr. Dwight. Other counsels to the young. Some persons of both
sexes are always seeing, but never reflecting. An object deserving of
pity. Zimmerman's views. Reading to get rid of reflection. Worse things
still.
Great value of moments. An old maxim. Wasting shreds of time. Time more
valuable than money. What are the most useful charities. Doing good by
proxy. Value of time for reflection. Doing nothing. Rendering an
account of our time at the last tribunal.
Reasons for loving domestic life. 1. Young women should have some
avocation. Labor regarded as drudgery. 2. Domestic employment healthy.
3. It is pleasant. 4. It affords leisure for intellectual improvement.
5. It is favorable to social improvement. 6. It is the employment
assigned them by Divine Providence, and is eminently conducive to moral
improvement.--The moral lessons of domestic life. A well ordered home a
miniature of heaven.
The muscles, or moving power of the body. Their number and character.
Philosophy and necessity of exercise. Why young women should study
these. Various kinds of exercise. 1. Walking. 2. Gardening and
agriculture. 3. House-keeping. 4. Riding. 5. Local exercises.--
Difficulty of drawing the public attention to this subject. The slavery
of fashion. Consequences of the fashionable neglect of exercise. A
common but shocking sight.
Why rest and sleep are neglected. Sleep a condition. We should sleep in
the night. Moral tendency of not doing so. Is there any moral character
in such things? Of rest without sleep. Good habits is regard to sleep.
Apartments for sleep. Air. Bed. Covering. Temperature. Night clothing.
Advice of Macnish on the number of persons to a bed. Preparation for
sleep. Suppers. The more on indulge in sleep, the more sleep we seem to
require. The reader urged to study the laws of rest and sleep. An
appeal.
Dr. Bell's new work on Health and Beauty. Its value. Adam and Eve
probably very beautiful. Primitive beauty of our race to be yet
restored. Sin the cause of present ugliness. Never too late to reform.
Opinion of Dr. Rush. An important principle. The doctrine of human
perfectibility disavowed. Various causes of ugliness. Obedience to law,
natural and moral, the true source of beauty. Indecency and immorality
of neglecting cleanliness.
THE
YOUNG WOMAN'S GUIDE.
CHAPTER I.
EXPLANATION OF TERMS.
Defining terms. The word excellence here used as nearly synonym with
holiness. What is meant by calling the work a Guide. The term Woman--
why preferable, as a general term, to Lady. The class to whom this work
is best adapted.
It has been said, and with no little truth, that a large proportion of
the disputes in the world might have been avoided, had the disputants
first settled the meaning of the terms they respectively used. In like
manner might a large share of the misapprehension and error in the
world be avoided, if those who attempt to teach, would first explain
their terms.
This book is not called "The Young Woman's GUIDE," with the expectation
that she will consider it her only or even her principal guide. The
Bible should be the principal guide of every person, young or old, male
or female. Parents, also, are invaluable as guides. I offer it only as
the best guide which my reflections upon those subjects, connected with
the welfare of young women, that come within the department of my study
and observation, enable me to give. May it prove a guide indeed!
I have called it "The Young WOMAN'S Guide," because there are many who
are accustomed to associate with the word lady; the idea of exemption
from labor, and of entire devotion to something supposed to be above
it--as fashionable company, or fashionable dress and equipage. And not
a few can hardly hear the word mentioned without disgust. Miss Sedgwick
has illustrated this part of my subject very happily in the first and
fifteenth chapters of her "Means and Ends." She says she does not write
exclusively for those who are termed young _ladies;_ because she
does not believe in any such fixed class, in the country. The term
_lady_, she also says, is too indefinite for any valuable use. We
not only apply it to those who are, or would be, above labor, but in a
great many other ways--as that "old lady," meaning, perhaps, some
beggar at the door, &c.
In short, she does not like the use of the phrase, young lady, at all.
Neither do I. Besides, I like best the good old fashioned term, YOUNG
WOMAN. This exactly represents the class for whom I write, and that,
too, without either explanation or qualification. It will be mistaken
by no one, nor will it be likely to give or cause any offence.
Finally, I call the work "The YOUNG Woman's Guide," because I design it
for those single persons of the female sex to whom the term young is
usually applied; viz., those who are from twelve or fourteen to
eighteen or twenty years of age--and to those, in general, who are
single. I hope, nevertheless, that it will contain some thoughts which
may be useful to those individuals who are in married life, as well as
to those who are below the age of twelve years. Many of its suggestions
and principles will, indeed, be applicable--so far as they are just or
true--to all mankind.
CHAPTER II.
FEMALE RESPONSIBILITIES.
It was said by Dr. Rush, long ago, that mothers and school-masters
plant the seeds of nearly all the good and evil in our world.
But as mothers are never mothers till they have been daughters, is it
not obvious that the right education of these last is as great a work
as any to which human mind and human effort have ever been called? If
woman moves the world, intellectually, morally, and even, in effect,
politically--as no doubt she does--is it not of primary importance that
she be taught, as well as teach herself, to move it right?
But I am using the term education without explaining it. Let me, then,
ere I proceed to say more on the subject of female responsibility,
explain what I mean by education, especially female education.
I could tell them--were this the place for it--many a true story of
reading daughters who have been the means of awakening, in their aged
parents, or grand-parents, or other friends, a taste for reading, which
they might otherwise have gone down to the grave without acquiring. I
could tell them of many a father and mother, and grand-father and
grand-mother, grown grey in vice--hardened even by intemperance as well
as other vices--who have been reformed by the prattle, or the reproof,
or the prayers of a good daughter. Is not such a daughter a teacher?
I have seen the conduct of a whole school--I speak now of the common or
district school--graduated by the conduct of a single virtuous, and
amiable, and intelligent young woman, not twelve years old, who
attended it. I have seen a whole Sabbath school not a little affected
by the prompt attention, decorous behaviour and pious example of some
elder member of an older class, to whom the younger members of classes,
male and female, looked up, as to a sort of monitor, or I know not what
to call it--for the impression thus made, is better seen and felt than
described. The bad behaviour of a young woman, in these circumstances,
is, indeed, equally influential--nay, more so, inasmuch as the current
of human nature sets more readily downward than upward. Still, a good
example is influential--greatly so: would that it were generally known
how much so!
Suppose now that by your good behaviour and pious example in the
Sabbath school, you are the means of turning the attention of one
younger companion, male or female, to serious things, and of bringing
down upon that young person the blessing of Almighty God. Suppose that
individual should live to teach or to preach, or in some other form to
bless the world, by bringing numbers to the knowledge, and love, and
inculcation of the very truth which has saved his own soul--and these
last, in their turn, should become apostles or missionaries to others,
and so on. Is there any end, at least till the world comes to an end,
of the good influence which a good Sabbath school pupil _may_ thus
exert?
I have spoken of the influence which a young woman may have on millions
through the medium of the Sabbath school. But if she may influence in
this way, the millions of those who are to come after her, how much
more may she do in forming character for the great future, in the
family! Her presence in the Sabbath school is only once a week--an hour
or two a day, once in seven days; whereas, her influence in the family
is going on perpetually.
The clothes of Alexander the Great, are said to have been made, to a
very great extent, by his sisters; and those of Augustus C�sar were
made for many years, by his. And can we doubt that these young females
were influential, in a great many respects, in the education of these
conquerors? What could the latter have done, but for the assistance and
influence of mothers and sisters? And can we have any Alexanders and
C�sars, at the present day, to carry on the moral and intellectual
conquests which are so necessary in the world, without the aid and co-
operation of mothers and sisters?
Many a young female, having caught, in some degree, the spirit of doing
good, has sighed for opportunities. "What can I do?" she has seemed to
say, "here at home. If I could be a missionary at Ceylon, or South
Africa, or the Sandwich Islands, or even if I could be a teacher, I
could, perhaps, do something. But as it is, I must remain a mere cypher
in the world. I would do good, but I have no opportunities."
She who says this, is undoubtedly sincere. She is, however, greatly
mistaken. Her opportunities for doing good--for exerting an influence
to bless her race--"are neither few nor small." There is, indeed, a
difference, a very great difference, in human conditions and
circumstances; and yet I am persuaded, no female is so secluded as not
to be able to fulfil, towards her race, a most important mission.
Do you ask what the domestic of whom I have spoken has to do with all
this? I answer, much--very much indeed. Has she not rendered to the
teacher in whose employ she has been, that kind of services, without
which he could not have followed his occupation? And if ninety
millions, or even one tenth that number of citizens should, in the
course of the next two centuries, reap the benefit of his labors, and
become lights in the world, is it too much to say that she has been an
important aid in accomplishing the work? Nay, is it even too much to
affirm that unless the part which she has acted had been performed by
her or somebody else, the school could not have gone on, and two
hundred young women could not have received the teacher's instructions?
My remarks are applicable to all young women; but they are particularly
so to elder sisters. To them is given in special charge, the happiness
and the destiny of all younger brothers and sisters, be they ever so
numerous. As the desires of Abel were to be expressed to Cain, and the
latter was appointed to rule over the former, so is the elder daughter
appointed to rule over those whom God has, in the same manner,
committed to her trust. Happy is she who has right views of her weighty
responsibilities; but thrice happy is she who not only understands her
duty, but does it!
But if the moral character, much more than the physical and
intellectual well being of the family, is given in charge to elder
sisters, and even to all sisters, it is scarcely possible for them to
form a correct idea of the weight of their influence, in this respect
at least, till they are past the age when that influence is most
necessary, most persuasive, and most effectual.
I have seldom found a young man who had strayed long and widely from
the path of virtue, who had enjoyed the society and influence of a
wise, and virtuous, and attentive sister. On the contrary, I have
almost uniformly found such individuals to have been in families where
there were no sisters, or where the sisters were not what they ought to
have been; or to have been kept at schools where there were none but
our sex.
Woman, then, now so often miseducated, must be trained in the way she
should go. But let us consider a little more in detail what this
education or training of woman should be, and what it should
accomplish.
When Agesilaus, king of Sparta, was asked what things he thought most
proper for boys to learn, he replied--"Those which they ought to
practise when they come to be men." Nor does this essentially differ
from the direction of Solomon, which has been quoted.
If females do, in effect, rule the world, they ought, as I have before
said, to be trained to sway the sceptre of moral rule in the right
manner. If they now stand in the same position, as regards the world
and the world's happiness, with that which boys were supposed to occupy
in the days of Agesilaus, and if this thing was correct in his opinion,
then it follows that a proper answer to the question, What things are
most proper for girls to learn? would be--Those which they ought to
practise when they come to be women.
But it will not be forgotten that the definition I have given of the
term education includes much more than merely direct efforts to teach.
Whatever affects the health or the progress of body, mind or soul, even
though it were that in which the individual is mostly passive, as in
sleep, is a part of our education.
They are to be taught what they ought to practise when they come to be
men, according to Agesilaus; but according to the views of one who was
wiser than he, they are to be trained in the way they should go. The
latter view comes nearer the truth of the case than the former. It
requires, or at least permits us, to train up the child to-day for the
enjoyments of to-day, as well as for those of to-morrow--a point which
the maxim of Agesilaus does not seem to include.
I wish to see the day arrive when the young--young women, especially--
will not look forward so much to a distant day and to distant
circumstances, for a theatre of action, and for the rewards of action,
as they are accustomed to do; for they thus deprive themselves of a
vast amount of happiness which is due them in the _present_,
without in the least enhancing the value or the pleasures of the
future.
I wish to see them so educated that they will not only be what they
should be, when they come to adult age, but also what they should be
now. They have or should have a character to acquire _now_; a
reputation to secure and maintain _now_; and a sphere of personal
usefulness and happiness to occupy _now_.
It is true, indeed, that childhood and youth are more specially seasons
of preparation, and less specially seasons of reward, than maturer and
later life; but it is also equally true, that every stage of life, not
excepting its very evening, is little more than a preparation for a
still higher state, where reward will predominate in a degree which
will make all previous preparation seem to dwindle almost to nothing.
It will happen, unavoidably, that many young women to whom this little
volume may come, will have been trained up, to the time of casting
their eyes on these pages, in the old fashioned belief to which I have
alluded--viz., that they can neither _do_ nor _be_ much in the world,
except to submit passively to certain processes which have received the
name of education, till their arrival at a certain size or age. The fault,
reader--if such should be the case--is not chargeable, solely, on your
parents. They followed a custom which they found; they did not make it.
But however this may be, it is clear that your great object should now
be, to see what you can do for yourself.
Now, then, here you are, twelve, fourteen, perhaps sixteen years of
age. Your parents have brought you up according to the existing
customs, _for the future_. They have not sought to make you feel
your present responsibilities, your present power to do good, your
present capacity for communicating and securing happiness, so much as
to make you believe there are responsibilities, and powers, and
capacities, and rewards, to be yours when you come to be large enough
and old enough to appreciate or receive them.
But whatever your parents may have left undone in regard to the
formation of your character, it is yours to do. Need I urge the
necessity of the case? The present is an exceedingly important period
of your life; and what is to be done, must be done quickly. But what
your parents have hitherto left undone, they will be likely to continue
to leave undone. Unless you apply yourself, therefore--and that
immediately--to the finishing of a work, that, owing to the
circumstances in which they have been and still are placed, and the
views they have entertained, they have left unfinished, your education
is not likely to be, by any means, so perfect as it should be. You must
take it up, therefore, where they have left it; and do, for yourself,
what they have not done for you. In other words, you must engage, at
once, in the great work of self-education.
It may, indeed, be the case, that you are the child of parents who have
done their best, and who have done it intelligently. Blessed is the
young woman who has such parents, but thrice blessed are the parents
themselves, if, in the performance of their work, they have the co-
operation of the daughter. There must be self-education even where
there are the best of parents. In fact, the work of parental training
and that of self-education, should go on together; they cannot well be
separated. Parental effort will produce but half its legitimate
results, when not seconded by the efforts of infancy and childhood, and
especially of youth. The reasons for this are so obvious that they
hardly need to be repeated. No young woman can be constantly in the
company of her mother; no mother can constantly watch over her
daughter. In the best families there are hours of each day, when the
child of every age, especially of youthful age and capacity, must be
left to herself or to the influence of others. What, then, is to become
of her? Is she to yield to that current of the world which every where
sets downward?
You will say, perhaps, that she has good habit on her side, together
with the counsels of good and kind parents. If so, I say again, she is
highly favored. But what if it happen to be otherwise? What if the
parents happen not to be wise and discriminating, or seem unable to
find time, in the bustle of a busy world, to do that which they know it
were desirable to do? What then?
I repeat the sentiment, then: if you have the best of parents, you are
liable, at your age, to be thrown, day after day, into new and untried
circumstances--such as it were next to impossible for parents to
foresee. New feelings will arise unknown to yourself, and
undiscoverable by them. New passions will make their appearance--new
temptations will solicit--new trials will be allotted you, In spite of
the best parental efforts at education, there will still remain to you
a great work of _self_-effort.
You perceive your own character and happiness, for time and for
eternity, to be placed, in no small degree and measure, in your own
hands--the efforts of parents, friends and teachers to the contrary
notwithstanding. You perceive the formation of that character, by the
combined efforts of your parents and others and yourself, to constitute
the work of your education. You perceive yourself capable--at least I
hope you do--of everlasting progress; of approaching the great source
of Light, and Truth, and Knowledge, and Excellence, forever and ever,
though without the possibility of attaining it. You perceive that,
though allied on the one side to the dust you tread on, you are allied
on the other side to heaven; that though connected by ties of
consanguinity to the worm you are also connected, or may be, with
angels and archangels, and cherubim and seraphim, in the glorious work
of unceasing progress upward toward the throne of God. Will you not,
then, hail with joy, every effort of every being who would assist your
spirit in its upward flight?
CHAPTER IV
LOVE OF IMPROVEMENT.
Perhaps no person who reads these paragraphs, will doubt the truth of
the general principle I have laid down. Thus far, it may be said, all
seems to be correct. We are, indeed, bound to do every thing we do, to
the glory of God; and he can hardly be glorified in the doing of a
thing in a manner which is short of the best in our power.
Yet, when we come to apply the principle, and say in what particulars
we should strive to make progress and do better, from day to day, and
from hour to hour, (if the thing is to be performed so often,) many an
individual will be found, I fear, to stand back; and among those who
thus shrink from the just application of admitted principle, will be
found not a few who, till now, supposed they had within them a strong
desire for perpetual improvement.
is not so very far from the truth, as many suppose; and that happiness,
and even usefulness and excellence, are as little dependent on place
and condition, as honor and shame.
A mercantile man with whom I was once acquainted, gave me, in few
words, a very important lesson. He said he made it the rule of his life
to do, in the best possible manner, whatever at any time seemed, as a
subject of duty, to devolve upon him. No matter about his own likes or
dislikes--what appeared to be in the course of the dispensations of
Providence allotted him for the day, he performed with all his heart.
If he should conclude to pursue his present business for life, as the
means of procuring a livelihood, this would be the very best course of
preparation: if otherwise, it was the best under the circumstances; and
especially was it the best state of mental and moral discipline with
which he could be furnished.
The best possible preparation a young woman can have for a sphere of
action more congenial to her present feelings, is the one she now
occupies. She has, at least, duties to herself to perform. Let these,
as they recur, be performed in the best possible manner; and let the
utmost effort always be made to perform every thing a little better
than ever she performed it before--if it be but the washing of a few
cups, or the making of a bed. What her personal duties are, generally,
need not now be said: first, because many of them are obvious secondly,
because they will be treated of in their respective places. But it
should ever be borne in mind, that there is nothing ever so trifling,
which is worth doing at all, that may not be done better and better at
every repetition of the act; and that there is no occupation which may
not, in itself, be improved indefinitely.
The one lives only to enjoy; the other, to be the continual cause of
joy, like her Creator. The latter has a source of happiness within; the
former depends for her happiness on others. Leave her alone, or amid a
frowning or even an indifferent world, and she is miserable.
Would that I could reach the ears of that numerous class who are
dependent on the world around them for their happiness--who never
originated any good, and are becoming more and more useless everyday!
Would that I could make them believe that true happiness is not to be
found externally, unless it first exist in their own bosoms! Would that
I could convince them that the royal road to happiness--if there be
one--is that which has been alluded to in the preceding paragraphs; in
making all persons and things around us better--in transmuting, as it
were, under the influence of the gospel, all coarser things around us
to "apples of gold in pictures of silver."
I long exceedingly to see our young women filled with the desire of
improvement--physical, social, intellectual and moral. I long to see
their souls glowing with the desire to go about doing good, like their
Lord and Master. Not, indeed, _literally_, as I shall have
occasion to say in another place. But I long to have their hearts
expand to overflowing with love to the world for whom Christ died; and
I wish to have some of the tears of their compassion fall on those over
whom God has given them an amazing, and often an unlimited influence.
Could I hope to reach a dozen minds, and warm a dozen hearts, which had
otherwise remained congealed, or at most received passively the little
stream of happiness which a naked, external world affords them, without
any corresponding efforts to form a world of their own--could I be the
means of enkindling in them that love for everlasting progress towards
perfection, which is so essential to the world's true happiness and
their own--could I thus aid in setting in motion an under-current which
should, in due time, restore to us Eden, in all its primitive, unfallen
beauty and excellence,--how should I be repaid for these labors!
I will dare to hope for the best. If I have the sacred fire burning in
my own bosom, I will hope to be the means of enkindling it in the bosom
of a few readers. If my own soul glows with love to a fallen world, I
will dare to hope that a few, at least, of those whose souls are more
particularly made for love and sympathy, will be led to the same source
of blessedness.
CHAPTER V.
SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
She who merely understands all the little arts to which I have alluded,
which enable us to pass current with a fashionable and grossly wicked
world, will find her self-knowledge exceedingly small, when she comes
to compare it with the standard of self-acquaintance set up by such
writers as Mason, Burgh, Watts, &c.; and, above all, when she comes to
compare it with the standard of the Bible. How little, nay, how
contemptible will all mere worldly arts and shifts appear--things which
at most belong to the department of manners--when she comes to
understand her three-fold nature, as exhibited by the natural and
revealed laws of Jehovah!
She would train her eye in the best possible manner; but how can she do
so, if she is ignorant of the nature and powers of that wonderful
little organ? She would educate, properly, all her senses; but how can
she do it, without a knowledge of their structure, functions and
relations?
Perhaps she would study the philosophy of dress, and of eating and
drinking. How can she do so, till she understands, intimately, the
relation of the human system to air, heat, the various kinds of food,
drink, &c.?
She would know, still further, the relation of body to mind, and of
mind to body--of body and mind to spirit, and of spirit to body and
mind. She would study the particular effect of one passion, or faculty,
or affection, upon the body, or upon particular functions of the bodily
system--and the more remote or more immediate effects of diseases of a
bodily organ on mind and spirit. She must know all this, and a thousand
times, yea, ten thousand times as much, before she is qualified to go
far in the work of self-knowledge.
But she must go beyond even all this, and study her own peculiarities.
It is not sufficient to understand the general laws and relations of
the human economy; she must understand herself in her own individual
character--physically, intellectually and morally. She must understand
the peculiarities of her physical frame, of her mental structure, and
of her spiritual condition--her relation to other spirits, particularly
to the Father of spirits.
How amazing and how extensive--I repeat it--the science of self-
knowledge! To be perfect in it we need the life of a Methuselah! But
something may be done, even in the short period of seventy years. And
if it be but little that we can do in a life time, this consideration
only enhances the value of that little.
Let not the individual despair who can get but one new idea respecting
herself, in a day. If she can sit down at quiet evening and say, I know
something respecting myself which I did not know last night at this
time, let her be assured the day is not lost. One idea a day is three
hundred and sixty-five a year; and three hundred and sixty-five a year,
amount, in seventy years, to twenty-five thousand five hundred and
fifty. There _are_ those who can hardly be said, at seventy years
of age, to have twenty-five thousand five hundred and fifty ideas in
their heads.
Every young woman should, therefore, study these subjects for herself.
Such books as those of Miss Sedgwick--her "Poor Rich Man, and Rich Poor
Man," and her "Means and Ends"--will prepare the way, or will at least
enkindle the desire, for the kind of knowledge of which I am speaking.
She will then desire to read the works of the Combes, and perhaps, ere
long, some of the other popular books of our day, which treat of
Physiology and Hygiene. May I not venture to hope, that at an early
stage of her progress, some of the chapters of _this_ book will be
found serviceable, as well as several other works I have prepared,
especially the little volume called the "House I Live In?"
But it is not the physical department of her nature alone, that she who
has the desire for self-knowledge and self-progress, should study. Such
works as those of Mason on Self-Knowledge, Burgh on the Dignity of
Human Nature, Watts on the Mind, Opie on Detraction and Scandal,
Wayland on Moral Science, Skinner on the Religion of the Bible, &c.
&c., should not only be perused, but carefully studied. It is to little
purpose, that is, comparatively, that our physical nature is
attentively and assiduously studied and cultivated, if it lead not to
the more intimate and more earnest study of the immortal spirit.
In this better department--the spiritual--permit me, _once_ more,
to direct your attention to the Bible. It should be studied chiefly
without note or comment. Your own good sense, brought to bear upon its
simple, unstudied, unscholastic pages, accompanied by that light from
on high which is ever vouchsafed to the simple, humble inquirer and
learner, will be of more value to you than all the notes, and
commentaries, and dictionaries in the world, without it. It is a book
which is most admirably adapted to the progress of all grades of mind--
those which are but little developed, no less than those which are more
highly cultivated. Other books speak to the intellect--to the head;
this speaks to the heart. Other books often plead for human nature;
this presents it just as it is--its perversity and deformity on the one
side; its susceptibilities to improvement, its capability of
excellency, on the other. Though it reveals to us our humble origin--
the brotherhood of worms--on the one side, it unveils to us our
relation to angels and archangels, on the other. Nay, more; it not only
shows us our relation to the celestial hosts, and to Him who presides
in their midst, but it points out to the penitent and the humble, the
road which, through divine grace, will conduct them thither.
I have spoken of the study of the Bible without note or comment. Notes
and comments, indeed, after you have made diligent use of all your own
faculties and powers, and sought thereon the blessing of God's Spirit,
have their use. I am exceedingly fond of them: and I would not wholly
deny to you what I am so fond of myself. The danger is, of leaning upon
them too much. Scott, and Clarke, and Henry, and Jenks, and Calmet, and
Barnes, and Bush, may help to show me the true way of finding out and
interpreting the Scripture for myself; but if I go farther, and either
indolently or superstitiously suffer them to interpret it for me, it
were almost better that I had not sought their aid. But the Bible, with
or without notes, is--I repeat it--the great volume of self-knowledge
which I urge you to study, and which, in comparison with all the books
written by man, and even the great volume of nature herself, is alone
able to make you wise to salvation.
It seems to me to have been too seldom observed, and still more seldom
insisted on, how apt the love and study of the Bible are to awaken the
dormant intellectual faculties, and to enkindle, even in the aged, a
desire for general improvement. On this point, Mr. Foster, in his essay
on Popular Ignorance, has some very striking remarks. In alluding to
that great moral change which it is one object of the Bible to produce,
and to the consequences which often immediately follow, he thus
remarks:
This change in the moral and religious man, has been often observed;
and Mr. Foster, therefore, tells us nothing very new, however striking
it may be. But now for the secondary effect which is produced on the
intellect, and, indeed, on the whole character:
"It (the soul) has been seen filled with a painful and indignant
emotion at its own ignorance; actuated with a restless desire to be
informed; acquiring an unwonted applicableness of its faculties to
thought; attaining a perception combined of intelligence and moral
sensibility, to which numerous things are becoming discernible and
affecting, that were as non-existent before. We have known instances in
which the change--the intellectual change--has been so conspicuous,
within a brief space of time, that even an infidel observer must have
forfeited all claim to a man of sense, if he would not make the
acknowledgment--This that you call divine grace, whatever it may really
be, is the strangest awakener of faculties, after all."
One thing more, however, should be remembered. Not a few who really
have within them the desire of improvement, and who mean to make the
Bible and its doctrines their standard, fail of accomplishing much
after all. The reason is, they measure themselves, continually, by
their neighbors. If they are no more ignorant or no more vicious than
their neighbors--Misses S. and L., perhaps--or on the other hand, if
they are as wise and as virtuous as Miss R.--they seem to rest
satisfied. Or at any rate, if, they make as much progress in the great
path of self-knowledge, or do as much good in the world as the latter,
they are anxious for no more, and settle down in inaction.
Now every such individual ought to know that the habit of measuring
herself by others, in this way, will hang like a millstone about her
neck; and if it do not drown her in the depths of ignorance and
imbecility, will at least make her forever a child, in comparison with
what she should be. It will keep her grovelling on the earth's surface,
when she ought to be exploring the highest heavens. It will keep her a
near neighbor to the sisterhood of worms on which she treads, when she
ought to be soaring towards those lofty heights which Gabriel once
traversed--nay, which he even now traverses--fast by the throne of the
Eternal.
Let her not stop, then, to demean, and embarrass, and fetter herself by
comparisons of herself with any thing finite. She has no right to do
this. The perfection which the word of God requires, is the standard or
measure by which she should compare herself. She may, indeed, sometimes
compare herself with herself--her present self with her past self--
provided it be done with due humility; but let her beware of measuring
herself by others. Such a course is as perilous as it is ignoble and
unprofitable.
CHAPTER VI.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS.
While truth compels us to admit that Christianity has already done much
to awaken the consciences of men, we shall gain nothing by shutting our
eyes to the vast influence it has yet to exert, before mankind will
become what they ought to be.
Most people are conscientious in _some_ things. They may have been
so trained, for instance, that they are quite tender in regard to the
feelings of others, and even those of animals. There are many who, with
Cowper, "would not enter on their list of friends the man who
needlessly sets foot upon a worm," who are yet very far from possessing
much real conscientiousness. Their feeling is better entitled to the
name of _sympathy_.
I grant that many of these persons possess something more than mere
tenderness or sympathy. Not a few of them are truly conscientious in
what may be called the larger concerns of life--especially in external
religion. They not only feel the force of conscience, but they obey her
voice in some things. They would not fail to attend to all the outward
rites of religion in the most faithful manner, on any account whatever;
and if a failure should occur, would find their consciences reproaching
them in the severest manner, for their departures from a known standard
of duty.
I do not suppose that young women are less conscientious than young
men; nor that the young of either sex are less conscientious than their
seniors. It would be a novel if not unheard of thing, to find the youth
without conscience, merging, in due time, into the conscientious
octogenarian. The contrary is the more common course.
And yet how few are the young women who make it a matter of conscience
to perform every thing they do--the smaller no less than the larger
matters of life--in such a way as to meet the approbation of an
internal monitor. Do they not generally bow to the tribunal of a
fashionable world? Do they generally care sufficiently, in the every
day actions, words, thoughts and feelings of their lives, what God's
vicegerent in the soul says about their conduct?--or if they _do_
care, is it because it is right or wrong in the sight of God--or of
_man_?
Few, I say, will deny the tendency and power of habit, in regard to the
larger matters of life. But is it sufficiently known that every act
which can possibly be regarded as fraudulent in the smallest degree,
has the same tendency?
There are a thousand things that people do, which cannot be set down as
absolutely criminal, in the view of human law, or human courts, and
which are not forbidden in any particular chapter or verse of the
divine law, which, notwithstanding, are forbidden by the spirit of
both.
Human law, no less than divine law, requires us to love our neighbor as
ourselves. Is the law obeyed when we make the smallest approach to
taking that advantage of a neighbor, which we would not like to have
taken of us in similar circumstances?
Those who admit and seem to understand the power of habit in larger
matters, are yet prone to forget the tendency of an habitual disregard
of right and wrong in small matters. They are by no means ignorant,
that large rivers are made up of springs, and rills, and brooks; but
they do not seem to consider that the larger stream of conscientiousness
must also be fed by its thousand tributaries, or it will never flow; or
once flowing, will be likely soon to cease. In other words, to be
conscientious--truly so--in the larger and more important concerns of
life, we must be habitually, and I had almost said religiously so, in
smaller matters--in our most common and every day concerns.
Would that nothing worse were true, than that people of all ranks and
professions, and of all ages and conditions, habitually, and with less
and less compunction or regret, do that which they know they ought not
to do, and leave undone that which they very well know ought to be
done. For they even seem to justify themselves in it.
One way of solving this great riddle in human life and conduct--this
incessant doing by mankind of that which they know they ought not to
do, and neglecting to do that which they know ought to be done--may be
found in the fact that so few are trained to regard, in every thing,
the sacred rights of conscience. They are referred to other and more
questionable standards of authority.
If you do so and so, you will never be a lady, says a mother who wishes
to dissuade her young daughter from doing something to which she is
inclined. If you behave so, every body will laugh at you, says another.
If you do not obey me, I shall punish you, says a third. If you don't
do that, I shall tell mother, says a young brother or sister. If you do
not do it, father will give you no sugar toys, when he comes home, the
child is again told. If you don't mind me, the bears will come and eat
you up, says the petulant nurse or maid-servant. Thus, in one way or
another, and at one time or another, every motive--love, fear,
selfishness, pleasure, &c.--is appealed to in the education of the
young, except that which should be _chiefly_ appealed to--viz.,
self-approbation, or the approbation of conscience.
This is not all. There is with many of these people no settled rule as
to which sort of actions are to be the subjects of praise or of blame.
A thing which must not be done to-day, on penalty of the loss of the
forthcoming sugar toys, is connived at, perhaps with a kiss, to-morrow.
All in the child's mind is confusion; she knows not what to do, were
she as docile and as obedient as an angel of light. There is a long
series of actions, words, thoughts and feelings, connected with right
and wrong, of which nothing is ever said, except to forbid them, by
stern and absolute authority. That one is good, and another bad, except
according to the whim or fancy of the parent or teacher, the child
never suspects.
Of this last class are almost all the actions of every-day life. The
child alluded to is scolded, at times, for default in matters which
pertain to rising, dressing, saying prayers, eating, drinking, playing,
speaking, running, teazing, or soiling its clothes or books, and a
thousand things too familiar to every one to render it necessary to
repeat.
If she has drank deeply of the desire for improvement, and if she
wishes to know and to reform herself as fast as possible, let her begin
by cultivating, to the highest possible degree, a sense of right and
wrong, and an implicit and unwavering obedience to the right.
She carries out her decision. She finds herself waking too late,
occasionally, it is true. However, she not only hurries out of bed the
instant she wakes, but recalls her former view of the sinfulness of her
conduct. She is no sooner dressed, than she asks pardon for her
transgression, and prays that she may transgress no more. This course
she continues; and thus her convictions of the sinfulness of her former
indolent habit and waste of time are deepened. At length, by her
persevering efforts and the assistance of God, she gains the victory,
and a new and better habit is completely established.
Just so should it be with any other bad habit. Every young woman should
consider it as a sin against God, and should begin the work of
reformation as a duty, not only to herself and to others, but also and
more especially to God. If it be nothing but the error of eating too
much--which, by the way, is not so small an error as many seem to
suppose--let her try to regard it in its true light, as a transgression
against the laws of God. Let it be so regarded, not merely once or
twice, but habitually. In this way it will soon become--as in the case
of early rising--a matter of conscience.
In short, it should be the constant practice of every one who has the
love of eternal improvement strongly implanted in her bosom, to
consider every action performed, during the day, as sinful, when it has
not been done in the best possible manner, whether it may have been one
thing or another. As I have stated repeatedly elsewhere, there is
nothing worth doing at all, which should not be done to the honor and
glory of God; and she who would attain to the highest measure of
perfection, should regard nothing as done in this manner, which is not
done exactly as God her Saviour would have it done.
I have said that some good people--that is, those who are comparatively
good--fall short in this matter. A young woman is a teacher, perhaps,
in a Sabbath school. She knows, full well, the importance of attending
promptly at the appointed hour; and she makes it a point thus to
attend. At last she fails, on a single occasion--not from necessity,
but from negligence, or at least from want of due care--and her
conscience at once reproaches her for her conduct. But, ere long, the
offence is repeated. The reproaches of her conscience, though still
felt, have become less keen. The offence is repeated, again and again,
till conscience is almost seared over--and the omission of what had at
first given great pain, almost ceases to be troublesome. And thus the
conscience, having been blunted in one respect, is more liable to be so
in others. Alas for the individual, who is thus, from day to day,
growing worse, and yet from day to day becoming less sensible of it!
But there is a worse case than I have yet mentioned. A young woman has
risen rather late on Sunday morning; and having risen late, other
things are liable to be late. The hour for church is at length near;
the bell is even ringing. Something in the way of dress, not very
necessary except to comply with fashion, and yet on the whole
desirable, remains to be done during the remaining five minutes; but
what is more important still, the habit of secret prayer for five
minutes before going to church, is uncomplied with. One of these, the
closet or the dress, must be neglected for want of time. Does any one
doubt which it will be? Does any one doubt that the dress will receive
the desired attention, and that the closet will be neglected?
But does any one suppose that conscientiousness can live and flourish
where it is not only not cultivated, but habitually violated, in regard
to the most sacred matters? Secret prayer is one of the most sacred
duties; and they who habitually neglect or violate it, for the salve of
doing that which is of secondary importance--knowing it to be so--are
not only taking the sure course to eradicate all conscientiousness from
their bosoms, but are most manifestly preferring the world to God, and
the love and service of the world, to the love and service of its
glorious Creator and Redeemer.
CHAPTER VII.
SELF-GOVERNMENT.
But setting aside occasions of this kind, is there not a demand on our
whole nature, for general cheerfulness? It is not only the "sunshine of
the soul," but that of the body. The truly cheerful are not only
happier in their minds and spirits, but also in their very bodies. The
brain and nervous system play their part in the great drama of physical
life better; the heart, and stomach, and lungs, work better. Indeed,
all is better throughout.
Above all, do I like to see the young woman discreet. Discretion not
only heightens the pleasures of her existence, but adds greatly to her
reputation in the just estimation of the wise. Coupled with modesty, of
which I am to speak presently, it more than doubles her charms.
"It is probable that modesty derives its cause in woman, from a certain
mistrust in her own merit, and from the fear of finding herself below
that very affection which she is capable of exciting, and of which she
is the object. ... Modesty compels her love to assume that form by
which nature has taught her so universally to express it--that of
gratitude, friendship, &c. ... Modesty is a means of attraction with
which nature inspires all females."
Under this head I will just add, that since by modesty the weaker
govern the stronger, it is of immense importance that woman should know
the true secret of maintaining her power and also by what means she is
likely to jeopardize that power. And without undertaking to determine
what shall be the precise rules of female action, and the precise
limits of the sphere within which the Author of her nature designed she
should move, is it not worth the serious inquiry, whether she does not,
as a general fact, lose influence the moment she departs widely from
the province which God in nature seems to have allotted her; when, like
a Woolstoncroft, or a Wright, or others still of less painful
notoriety, she mounts the rostrum, and becomes the centre of gaping,
perhaps admiring thousands of the other sex, as well as of her own. So
did not the excellent women of Galilee, eighteen hundred years ago;
although they were engaged, heart and hand, in a cause than which none
could be more glorious, or afford a greater triumph, especially to
their own sex. They probably knew too well their power, to endanger it
thus in the general scale; or if not, they probably yielded to the
impulses of a spirit which could direct them in a path more congenial
to their own nature, as well as on the whole more conducive to their
own emancipation, elevation and perfection.
Let not the reader confound modesty and bashfulness; for they are by no
means the same thing. Modesty is as much opposed to impudence as any
thing can be; and yet it is certain that impudence is often conjoined
with bashfulness. Not so often, to be sure, in the female sex, as in
our own; and yet such a phenomenon is occasionally witnessed, even in
woman.
VIGILANCE.--The young woman who truly understands and practises the art
of self-government, will not only train herself to be at once cheerful,
discreet, modest, diffident and courageous; she will also be vigilant.
The largest ship may be sunk by a very small leak; and in like manner,
may the brightest and noblest character lose its lustre, unless the
possessor is ever on the watch. Let not the most perfect individual on
earth say, in the plenitude of his own power, and in the height of his
own assurance--"My mountain stands strong. I shall never be moved."
Such assurances of self-government and self-possession may be proper--
of course are so--in Him who is in his own nature perfect and
immutable--infinitely and eternally so; but not in a frail, mutable,
created man or woman--above all, in the young and inexperienced.
Pardon me, then, youthful reader, when I repeat the Scripture cautions
--"Be vigilant;" and "Let him who thinketh he standeth, take heed lest
he fall." It is easier to maintain the measure of self-government we
have already attained, and even to add to it, than to recover what we
have once lost.
THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.--On this account, set a guard over the very
thoughts of your hearts. All sin begins in the desires of the heart and
the affections of the soul. There, in the deep recesses of the man, it
germinates. Let every imagination, then, which exalts itself unduly, be
brought low; and let the stream of thought and feeling be pure, and
perfect, and holy. Acquire the exceedingly important habit of confining
your thoughts and desires to those subjects which your judgment tells
you are lawful and proper--and which are not only lawful and proper in
general, but which are so at particular times and places. The wise man
says there is a time and season for every thing; and more than
intimates, that it is wisdom to confine every thing--thoughts and
feelings, no less than words and actions--to their own place and time,
respectively.
Now let me tell every young woman who has imbibed this erroneous and
dangerous notion, that God has never suffered the command of her temper
to be placed beyond her reach. She may acquire the most perfect self-
command, even in this respect, if she will. Not in a moment, nor in a
day, it is true. The work may be the labor of months, or of years.
Still, the battle can be won: a permanent and final victory can be
achieved.
The very general idea, that single persons somewhat advanced in life,
especially females, become habitually impatient or ill tempered, has
too much truth for its foundation, though it is by no means universally
true. Nor is it ever necessary that it should be so, as I have
endeavored to show elsewhere.
I wish every young person could be induced to study deeply the causes
which operate on mankind to originate or perpetuate a bad temper. They
are numerous--exceedingly so. It is not necessary to charge much upon
our ancestors. The causes may much oftener be found within our own
minds and bodies, would we but look for them there. We harbor or
perhaps indulge a thousand unpleasant feelings from day to day, not
seeming to know, or at least to realize, that as small streams form
larger ones, so these first risings of anger lead to its more out-
breaking forms.
Here I must again urge upon every young woman the duty of studying the
laws of health, and especially those of temperance. The knowledge thus
to be obtained, would be of exceeding great value to her in the
government of her passions and appetites.
Prof. Mussey, recently of Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, relates,
that a teacher in Boston, whose general course of discipline was quite
mild, was sometimes so much affected in his temper by high-seasoned or
over-stimulating dinners, as to be petulant and passionate, even to
blows, immediately afterward.
Now, whether this was often the case with the individual in question, I
cannot say. This, however, I may affirm with the utmost safety and
confidence--that many an individual who finds her passions or her
appetites more than usually troublesome or rebellious, would do well to
look for the cause in the bad air which she breathes, the bad food or
drinks she uses, or in something else in herself or in her habits which
might have been prevented.
One reason why I urge it is, because we are almost universally referred
to moral means and moral considerations alone, in order to keep in
subjection the body--its passions and appetites--and seldom, if ever,
to a proper attention to our food or our drink, our air, our exercise,
or our sleep. Nay, the hopes of the young, in regard to keeping the
body in subjection, are sometimes completely paralyzed by the grave
assertion, that the strength of our passions and appetites is
constitutional--as much our inheritance, as the color of our eyes, or
the contour of our physiognomies, and almost equally unalterable.
One of the most powerful and ever active causes of that slavery of the
soul to the body, which every person of sense must perceive and
deplore, is our unnatural and artificial cookery. Had it been the aim
of all the cookery in the world, to make it as bad as possible for the
health of body and soul, I know not that things could have been worse
than they are now. Very few things, indeed, are made more palatable,
more digestible, or more nutritious by it--the legitimate and only ends
of all the efforts of our fashionable cookery. On the contrary, they
are made, almost universally, a great deal worse for us.
Let the young woman who would serve God in her day and generation, by
doing good in the reformation, elevation, and eternal progress of
herself and those around her, not only study deeply the laws of health
and life, but let her tax her powers of reasoning and invention, to see
if it is not possible to remove the cause of so much mischief from our
parlors, our sleeping-rooms, our kitchens, and our tables. Much must be
done, in this respect, before the world can become what it ought to be;
and woman must lead the way--woman of some future generation, if not of
the present.
CHAPTER VIII.
SELF-COMMAND.
Some thirty or forty years ago, when the Indians had not yet done
making depredations on the inhabitants of our then frontier states,
Kentucky and Ohio, a band of these savage men came to the door of a
house in Nelson county, Ky., and having shot down the father of the
little family within, who had incautiously opened the door, they
attempted to rush in and put to death the defenceless and unoffending
mother and her children. But Mrs. Merrill--for that was the name of the
heroic woman--had much of that self-command, or presence of mind, which
was now so needful. She drew her wounded husband into the house, closed
the door and barred it as quickly as possible, so that the Indians
could not enter at once, and then proceeded to the defence of "her
castle," and all those in it whom she held dear.
The Indians had soon hewed away a part of the door, so that they could
force themselves in, one by one, but not very rapidly. This slow mode
of entrance gave time to Mrs. M. to despatch them with an axe, and drag
them in; so that before those without were aware of the fate of those
inside, she had, with a little assistance from her husband, formed
quite a pile of dead bodies within and around the door; and even the
little children, half dead though they at first were with fear, had
gradually begun to recover from their fright.
I have not related this story because I suppose any of my readers will
ever be tried in this particular manner. Many of them, however, may be
placed in circumstances exceedingly trying; and their lives and those
of others may depend on a little presence of mind.
Suppose, now, that Mrs. M., instead of dragging her wounded husband
into the house and fastening the door, had stood still and screamed; or
suppose she had fainted, or run away; what would have been the result?
We do not know, it is true; but we know enough of the Indian mode of
warfare to see that no condition could well be more perilous.
But if most females were fitted for trying emergencies, as I doubt not
they could be, how much better they could meet the more common
accidents and dangers to which human existence is daily more or less
liable. And ought they not to be thus fitted?
Do you ask how item be done? This is precisely the question I should
expect would be asked by those who have a strong desire for
improvement. It is a work that is at present chiefly left undone, both
by parents and teachers, and yet hundreds of lives are lost every year
for the want of it; and hundreds of others are likely to be lost in the
same way every year for many years to come, unless the work is taken up
as a work of importance, and studied with as much zeal as grammar, or
geography, or botany, or mathematics.
But the question recurs--How can these evils be prevented? In what way
can our young women be taught--or in what way can they be induced to
teach themselves--the important art of commanding themselves, on all
occasions, and in all emergencies?
An aged but excellent minister of the gospel with whom I had the honor
and the pleasure of being intimately acquainted, once said, that the
only way of being prepared for the sudden accidents of life--by being
able to keep cool and possess our souls in peace--was to think on the
subject often, and consider what we would do, should such and such
accidents occur.
There are around every young woman, those whose judgment is worth
something in this matter. It is not always the old--though it is more
generally such. There are those who live in the world almost half a
century without learning any thing; and there are also those who become
wise in a quarter of a century. The wise, whatever may be their age,
are the persons for you to consult; and the older such persons are, the
better--because the greater is likely to be their wisdom. The truly
wise, are always growing wiser; it is the fool alone who remains
stationary. Wise and observing friends will probably tell you--or at
least relate anecdotes to you, from which you may gather the
conclusion--that when the clothes of a child have caught fire, you may
often smother the flame by wrapping him instantly in a thick woollen
blanket:--that it is seldom entirely safe to open the doors into an
adjoining room--at least without great caution--when the house which we
are in is discovered to be on fire; but the best way, as a general
rule, is, to escape by the scuttle, if there be one, or by a ladder, or
by letting ourselves down to the ground, if the distance is not too
great, through the windows. This last is often the best way, though not
always the most expeditious one. Many sleep with a rope in their bed-
rooms to tie to the bed-post, as a means of letting themselves down,
should there be occasion; while others rely on the bed-clothes--to make
a rope of them by tying several articles together.
CHAPTER IX.
DECISION OF CHARACTER.
Is it too much to say, that half the world are miserable on this
account,--miserable themselves, and a source of misery to others? Is it
too much to say, that decision of character is more important to young
women than to any other class of persons whatever?
There is one habit which should be cultivated, not only for its
usefulness in general, but especially for its value in leading to true
decision of character. I mean, the habit of doing every thing which it
devolves upon us to do at all, precisely _at the time_ when it
ought to be done. Every thing in human character goes to wreck, under
the reign of procrastination, while prompt action gives to all things a
corresponding and proportional life and energy. Above all, every thing
in the shape of decision of character is lost by delay. It should be a
sacred rule with every individual who lives in the world for any higher
purpose than merely to live, never to put off, for a single moment, a
thing which ought to be done immediately--if it be no more than the
cleaning or changing of a garment.
She may, indeed, be so by fits and starts; but the habit will never be
so confirmed as to be regarded as an essential element of her
character.
CHAPTER X
SELF-DEPENDENCE.
Here, again, our fashionable modes of education are wrong; and here,
too, almost every young woman who is determined on improvement, has a
great work to perform.
And yet nothing is more true, than that human character has always,
with few if any exceptions, been most fully developed and most
harmoniously and healthfully formed, amid difficulties. Mr. M'Clure,
the distinguished geologist, whose opportunities for observation in the
world have been very great, says that orphans, as a general rule, make
their way best in the world. Without claiming for myself so many years
of observation, by thirty or forty, as this distinguished veteran in
natural science, I should be glad to make one modification of his
conclusion, before adopting it as my own. I would say, that the
misfortune of having no parents at all, is scarcely greater than that
of having over-indulgent ones; and that the number of those who are
spoiled by indulgence, is greater than the number of those who are
spoiled by being made orphans.
The truth is, that when we look about us and see so many spoiled, who
appear to be well bred, our attention is so exclusively directed to
these strange, but, in a dense population, frequently occurring cases,
that we begin, ere long, to fancy the exception to be the general rule.
And again, when we see here and there an orphan--and in a population
like ours, quite a multitude in the aggregate--making her way well in
the world, we are liable to make another wrong conclusion, and to say
that her success belongs to the general rule, when it is only an
exception to it.
Let it not be thought, then, that our young women in New England--a
land of comparative ease, quiet and affluence--can be brought up as
they ought to be, without much pains-taking. A century ago, things
were, in this respect, more favorable. Then there were struggles; and
these were the means of forming a race of men and women, of whom the
world might have been proud. Then the young women knew how to take care
of themselves; and having been taught how to take care of themselves,
they knew how to take care of others.
But "times are altered." Thousands of young women--and the same is true
of young men--are trained from the very cradle, scarcely to know any
thing of want or difficulty. All is comparative ease, and comfort, and
quiet around them; and they are led by ease and indulgence to love to
have it so. They are trained, as I have elsewhere said, to depend on
the world and its inhabitants for their happiness--not to originate
happiness and diffuse it. They are trained, in effect, to believe that
happiness, or blessedness, consists--contrary to the saying of our Lord
and Saviour--in _receiving_; not in _giving_.
The time _was_, I say once more, when most young women, if thrown
by the hard hand of necessity upon their own resources, could yet take
care of themselves. No matter how great their poverty or affliction--
how large or how deep their cup of adversity or trial--they would, in
general, struggle through it, and come out as gold seven times refined.
Mothers left with large families of helpless children, and with no
means of sustaining them but the labor of their own hands, and
daughters left without either parent, would wind their way along in the
world, and the world be both the wiser and the better for their
influence.
Now, on the contrary, mothers and young women left destitute, are apt
to be, of all beings, except the merest infants of the former, the most
helpless.
This applies to even a large portion of what are called the poor. In
reality, however, we have no poor--or next to none. Our very paupers
are comparatively rich. They dress, and eat, and drink, and
_dwell_ like princes. How, then, can they be so very poor?
It is true, that nearly all of our young women are trained to something
in the shape of labor. Very few, indeed, are trained to positive
indolence. But what is their labor, generally speaking? A little
sewing, or knitting, or embroidery; or still worse, in circumstances of
poverty or peculiar necessity, a life of spinning, or weaving, or
braiding; or some other mechanical occupation which has no tendency to
prepare them for true self-dependence.
I have said we have little poverty existing among us. Is it not so? Is
not the life of young women in the great mass of our New England
families, very far removed from any feeling of want or suffering?
That three or four females may thus spend all their time for an hour or
more in getting breakfast, when one alone would do it much more quietly
and a great deal better, and in little more time than is occupied by
the whole of them, is not the worst of the evil. The great trouble is,
that no one is acquiring the habit of self-dependence. On the contrary,
they are acquiring so strong a habit of doing things in company, that
they hardly know how to do them otherwise. True, there is pleasure
connected with this sort of dependence--and most persons are
exceedingly fond of it; but the question is whether it is useful--and
not whether it is or is not pleasurable.
I hardly know what a young woman is to do, who finds herself in the
dependent condition of which I have been speaking. The habit is not
very likely to be broken, so long as she remains in the place where it
was formed. I have, however, seen such a habit successfully broken up;
in one instance; and perhaps it may be useful to relate it.
Of course it is not desirable to see our young women all orphans, and
brought up as domestics, for the sake of having them brought up in such
a way as to be good for something, [Footnote: Nor can I wish to see
young women trained to do the "buying and selling," instead of men, in
order to give energy to their character; although I do not doubt that
such a course is often successful. It is related by Mr. Ennis, a highly
credible traveller that in Bali and Lombok, two islands lying eastward
of Java, the females do all the buying and selling, even to the amount
of thousands of dollars. "This probably gives" he says, "to the whole
race of people a portion of that boldness and energy for which they are
a little distinguished." But then, as he very honestly adds, it gives
the women somewhat of a masculine character--a thing which should not
by any means be encouraged.] instead of being the poor dependent beings
they too commonly are; yet it were greatly to be desired, that without
the disadvantages of orphans at service in families, they could have
the energy and self-dependence of such persons.
This individual had been abandoned by one of her parents very early in
life, and had been also early separated by poverty from the other. She
had lived in various families, and had been compelled to hard labor,
and sometimes to menial services. At length she married a person as
poor as herself, though not so independent. He had been bred in the
midst of ease; and was, consequently, indolent. But she was determined
on "going ahead" in the world; and her ambition at length roused her
husband.
The latter now engaged in hard labor, by the day or the month, among
his neighbors; while the wife took care of the concerns at home. This
continued for fifteen or sixteen years, before their joint labors
procured land enough for the husband to work on, at home. In the mean
time, however, they had a number of children; and the mother's cares
and labors of course increased. For several of the first of these
years, the husband was seldom at home to assist or encourage her, in
the summer, except during the Sabbath and occasionally at evening; so
that though this diminished the labor of cooking, it left her with her
children wholly on her hands, and a great deal of unavoidable labor,
such as washing and ironing. The latter work she did for her husband,
as well as for her children and herself: and it was therefore an item
of considerable moment--especially as she was obliged to bring water
for this and all her domestic purposes in pails, the distance of
twenty-five or thirty rods, a part of the year, and of ten rods or so,
the other part; besides which, she had to pick up much of her wood, for
the six summer months, in the woods nearly a quarter of a mile distant,
carry it home in her arms, and to cut it for the fire-place. Added to
all this, was the labor of _brewing_ once or twice a week; for in
those days, when poverty denied cider to a family, the beer barrel was
regarded as indispensable.
Nor were her domestic concerns, properly so called, her only labors.
She spun and wove cloth for the use of her family, besides weaving for
some of her neighbors. She also spun and wove a great deal of coarse
cloth, at shares; and thus purchased a large part of the smaller
necessaries of the family, and not a little of the clothing.
She continued this course, I say, something like fifteen years. Never,
to my knowledge, unless she was actually sick, did she receive any
assistance in her labors--not so much as a day's work of washing. And
yet under all these disadvantages, she reared--almost without help even
from the children themselves, as the difference between the oldest and
the youngest was only about eight years--a family of four children.
Reader, I do not ask you to imitate this veteran matron; for it would
be too much to ask of any individual in any age, especially the
present. But I ask you, and with great earnestness, to acquire the
power of self-dependence--and to do it immediately. Make it a matter of
conscience. Bear constantly in mind, that whatever _has_ been
done, _may_ be done. Shame on those who, knowing the value of
self-dependence, and having the power to acquire it, pass through life
so shiftless, that they cannot do the least thing without aid--the aid
of a host of relatives or menials. It is quite time that woman should
understand her power and her strength, and govern herself accordingly.
It is quite time for her to stand upright in her native, heaven-born
dignity, and show to the world--and to angels, even, as well as to men
--for what woman was made, and wherein, consists her true excellence.
CHAPTER XI.
REASONING AND ORIGINALITY
I know not why a young woman should not reason correctly as well as a
young man. And yet I must confess that, some how or other, a masculine
seems to be often attached to the thought of strong reasoning powers in
the female sex. To say of such or such a young woman, She is a bold and
powerful reasoner--would it not be a little uncommon? Would it be
received as a compliment? Would it not be regarded as a little out of
the way--and, to coin a term, as rather unfeminine?
For myself, I have many doubts whether we are really--whether the sex
themselves are, I mean--so much the gainers by the superficial
knowledge of modern days, which tends to the exclusion, in the result,
of that good old fashioned education to house-work, which was given by
the mothers of New England, in the days of her primitive beauty and
glory. Then were our young women, for the times, reasoning women; then
were they good for something. A few of those precious relics of a
comparatively golden age, have come down nearly to our own times. I
have even seen several of them since the beginning of the nineteenth
century. There is one of this description, more than eighty years of
age, now living with a son of hers in one of the Middle States. Her
sphere of action, however, in the days of her activity, lay not there,
but on one of those delightful hills which are found at the termination
of the Green Mountain range, in New England. There, in her secluded
country residence, among plain people, and with only plain means, with
her husband absent much of the time, she educated--not instructed,
merely, nor brought up at school, but educated--a large family of
children, most of whom live to bless her memory and the world. So
devoted was this woman to her household duties, and to the right
education of her family, that for eleven of the first and
_hardest_ years of her life, she never for once left the hill on
which she dwelt--a mile or so in extent.
And yet this female was a woman of reasoning powers superior to those
of most men. She understood, thoroughly, every ordinary topic of
conversation, and could discuss well any subject which came within her
grasp. She has been for a few years past, one of my most regular and
most valued correspondents; and nothing but her great age and great
reluctance to put pen to paper, would, I presume, prevent her from
writing more frequently than she is accustomed to do. As a specimen of
her style, I venture to insert a paragraph or two from her letters. The
first was written when she was in her eightieth year.
Again, when she was within a few weeks of eighty years of age, (which
was in January, 1838,) she wrote to me in the following vein of
playfulness:
"As I can invent nothing new, I must utter such truisms as I have
picked up by the way, in almost eighty years; for you say to me,
_write_--and of course I obey, and scribble on. Now I say to
_you_--and may I say it to Mrs. A. too?--WRITE. Write very
sensibly, by the way; for old as I am, I am a sharp critic. I read in
my early days Lord Kaimes' Elements, and I have been working up these
elements ever since; and if I cannot _invent_, I can understand
what is fairly presented to me: so you will receive this as a caution.
But don't be afraid! I'll tell you another thing, of which perhaps you
are not aware: I had rather have one letter warm from the heart, than a
dozen from the head."
But we are not only unwilling to stay to hear--we are unwilling to stay
to teach. It would be no hard matter for parents and teachers--
especially by beginning early--to establish in the young of both sexes,
habits of right reasoning. I am afraid, however, that parents and
teachers themselves do not perceive the value of such a habit, and that
they are not likely to do so for some time to come.
All, however, which remains for me to do, I must do. This is, to press
upon the few whose ear I can gain, the importance of this part of self-
education. Do not despise the idea of reasoning on subjects which come
before you; nor think it masculine or old fashioned. Not only accustom
yourselves to reason, but to reason on every thing. There is almost as
great a difference between a young woman who takes all things upon
trust, scarcely knowing that she can use her own powers in the
investigation of truth, and one who has been, like my worthy and
venerable correspondent, in the habit of observing and reasoning
seventy or eighty years, as there is between a Sam Patch and a
Bowditch--or a Hottentot and a Newton. Would that our young women knew
this, and would conduct themselves accordingly!
Why woman has invented so few thing. Abundant room for the exercise of
her inventive powers. Hints. Particular need of a reform in cookery.
Appeal to young women on this subject.
What have the inventive powers of woman accomplished, even within what
have been usually regarded as her own precincts? Has she invented many
special improvements in the art of house-keeping? Have the labors of
knitting, sewing, making, mending, washing, cooking, &c., been
materially facilitated, or rendered more effective, by her ingenuity?
Has she done much to advance the important art of bread-making towards
perfection?
Why has she not done more? Is genius confined to our sex? Nay, is there
even no common ingenuity out of the range of our own walks? Has not the
young woman, when she begins the world, the same mental faculties, in
number and kind, with the young man? How happens it, then, that the
world is filled with inventions, and so few of them originated by
woman?
When I speak of the appropriate sphere of woman, and of her taxing her
powers of invention there, I would by no means indulge myself in any
narrow or circumscribed views in regard to her field of operation. I
should have no sort of objection to the application of her inventive
powers to the work of facilitating the usual labors of the other sex--
particularly in the departments of agriculture and horticulture.
But I do not perceive any necessity for this. I believe there is work
enough--profitable and philanthropic work, too--to task woman's powers
of invention for many centuries, without her going out of her
appropriate sphere. In the art of cookery especially--which certainly
has a great deal to do with physical education and physical
improvement--there is great room for the exercise of her inventive
powers. This important art is, as yet, entirely in its infancy; and
where any progress has been made, it has been chiefly in a wrong
direction, and under the guidance of wrong principles. Be it yours,
young women, to give this matter a right direction, and to bring it to
bear as efficiently on the happiness of mankind, as it has hitherto on
their slow destruction.
CHAPTER XIII.
OBSERVATION AND REFLECTION.
Advice of Dr. Dwight. Other counsels to the young. Some persons of both
sexes are always seeing, but never reflecting. An object deserving of
pity. Zimmerman's views. Reading to get rid of reflection. Worse things
still.
"Your countenance open, your thoughts close, you will go safe through
the world"--was the advice of another individual, of less eminence, to
a young friend of his; and did it not savor a little too much of
selfishness, and perhaps of concealment, it would, like the advice of
Dr. Dwight, be worthy of careful consideration. It does not partake
quite enough of the gospel spirit and sentiment--"As a man hath
received, so let him give." It encourages us to get wisdom, but not to
communicate it.
I have said that the advice of Dr. Dwight was, in the main, wholesome.
The only objection that can be made to it is, that it gives no
encouragement to reflection. Some may suppose it to mean, that
observation, or _seeing_, is every thing. Now there are those who
appear to see too much. They _always_ have their eyes open. They
are never satisfied otherwise. They absolutely hate all reflection.
Some persons read solely to get rid of reflection. Worse than this,
even; some persons read, work and play--and I had almost said, go to
church, and put themselves in the attitude of prayer and praise--to get
rid of themselves and their reflections. Who will show us any good
thing? is their constant cry: not, Who will lead us, by external
agencies, or by any other means, to sound and useful reflection. Who
will show us ourselves? is a cry which, among the young women of New
England, as well as those of most other countries, is too seldom heard.
The best advice I can give to such persons--next to that given in the
Sermon on the Mount, where they are directed to enter into their
closet--is, to read with great care, or rather to study, Watts on the
Improvement of the Mind. That is a work which has probably done as much
good in the way of which I am now speaking, as any book--the Bible
excepted--in the English language.
CHAPTER XIV.
DETRACTION AND SCANDAL.
Let it not be supposed, for one moment, that I consider young women as
more generally in the habit of detraction than other people; for I
venture on no comparisons of the kind. All I presume to take for
granted is, that they are often exceedingly faulty in this respect, and
need counsel and caution. Were there any doubts on the latter point,
one would think they might very readily be removed by reading the
excellent work of Amelia Opie, entitled, "Detraction Displayed; or, a
Cure for Scandal."
Nor is there less of truth in what the evangelist says, that "whoso
hateth his brother" (and does not a slanderer _hate_?) "is a
murderer."
I know it may seem harsh to fasten on any class of the community, and
above all, on the young of either sex, the charge of robbery or murder.
But is it not proper that the truth should be told? And if there is
such a propensity in us to competition in its varied forms, that not
only thoughts but words of detraction are, as it were, forever on our
thoughtless tongues and lips, and we will not, though often warned, set
a guard over the latter, is it not right that we should be represented
as the robbers of reputation? And if there is such a disposition to try
to be first in the community, and to compel those around us to take the
second place--the lower seat--as generates envy and hatred--the
_seeds_ of murder--is it not right to warn the young of their
danger? And when we find them callous to our representations of the
truth--when we find their hearts almost as unmoved as the firm rocks
they tread on, notwithstanding our most faithful exhibitions of human
depravity, as is evinced by the slander, the detraction and the calumny
which every where prevail, and which many must see, as in a glass, to
prevail in their own bosoms, while yet their very blood recoils at the
tales of imaginary wo from the pen of Bulwer, or some other novelist of
kindred fame--is it not proper to remind people of what the evangelist
says of hatred, that it is murder?
Burns, the poet, sought some power who would bestow on us the gift "to
see ourselves as others see us." Poor Burns! this was as high as he
could be expected to go. But how much more to be desired is it, that we
could see ourselves as _God_ sees us? Not indeed at once, lest the
very sight should sink us, forthwith, into everlasting night; but by
degrees, rather, as we may be able to endure it.
I need not enter into particulars, especially when the invaluable work
of Mrs. Opie is before the world. Let me refer those who entertain
doubts whether, after all, I am not among the very sort of detractors
whom I am censuring with so much severity--and whether, what I complain
of in the individual, as abusive on here and there a neighbor or
acquaintance, I am not pouring, by wholesale, and with a spirit not a
whit better, upon a whole community,--let me refer all such, I say, to
that invaluable work. Let me also refer them to themselves.
I am sure no one can carefully examine and analyze her own most secret
feelings without discovering in herself the spirit of detraction in
some form or other, if it be only in the form of genteel slander, envy
or discontent. If there be those who do not find it so with themselves,
and who say that however it may be with others, they are not thus
circumstanced or thus guilty, I pity them most sincerely, as grossly
ignorant of themselves. Such persons I have only and lastly to refer to
that volume of Divine Truth, which assures us that the heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; and which asks, with
the most pertinent significance, not to say eloquence-WHO CAN KNOW IT?
CHAPTER XV.
THE RIGHT USE OF TIME.
Great value of moments. An old maxim. Wasting shreds of time. Time more
valuable than money. What are the most useful charities. Doing good by
proxy. Value of time for reflection. Doing nothing. Rendering an
account of our time at the last tribunal.
Not, indeed, that hours and even days are not wasted, and worse than
wasted; but the great error is, in disregarding the value and slighting
the use of those smaller fragments of which hours, days and years are
made. Show me the individual, young or old, who sets any thing like a
just value on moments of time, and you will show me the person who
values, in a proper manner, its larger divisions.
There are thousands who suffer themselves to waste shreds of time which
might be applied to the attainment of knowledge--valuable knowledge--or
to the work of doing good in a world where so much good needs to be
done, who would not be willing to waste the smallest sum of money. I
would not speak lightly of the habit of wasting money; but it must be
admitted by all, that she who wastes, without remorse of conscience,
her precious moments which might be usefully employed--if not in
action, at least in conversation, or reading, or reflection--and yet
would not, on any account, waste a cent of money, is justly chargeable,
in a moral point of view, with straining out a gnat, and swallowing a
camel.
For it should never be forgotten, that however valuable money may be,
time is much more so. It is much more so, even as a means of doing
good. There are very many persons, it is true, who seem to think
otherwise. They seem not to think that they can do good with any thing
but money.
I am not sure that there are not times--very short seasons, I mean--
during our waking hours, even with those who are in tolerable health,
when we best serve God and our fellow men by doing absolutely nothing
at all. I am not sure, I say, that thus may not be the case. Still, if
it is so, we should be exceedingly careful not to run into excess in
this respect--an error which seems to be almost inevitable. For one who
spends too little time in doing nothing, it is believed a thousand
spend too much in this way. And let it never be forgotten, that not
only for every idle word, but for every misspent moment, we are,
according to Scripture, to render an account in the day when God will
judge the secrets of each heart, according to the gospel of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ.
CHAPTER XVI.
LOVE OF DOMESTIC CONCERNS.
Reasons for loving domestic life. 1. Young women should have some
avocation. Labor regarded as drudgery. 2. Domestic employment healthy.
3. It is pleasant. 4. It affords leisure for intellectual improvement.
5. It is favorable to social improvement. 6. It is the employment
assigned them by Divine Providence, and is eminently conducive to moral
improvement. The moral lessons of domestic life. A well ordered home a
miniature of heaven.
I have incidentally made a few remarks on this subject elsewhere; but
its importance demands a further and more attentive consideration.
There are numerous reasons which might be mentioned, why a young woman
ought to cultivate a love of domestic life, and of domestic concerns;
but I shall only advert to a few of them.
1. Every young woman should have some avocation, or calling. The Jews
formerly had a proverb, that whoever of their sons was not bred to a
trade, was bred to the gallows; and both Mohammedans and Pagans have
maxims among them which amount to the same thing. But is that which is
so destructive to the character of young men--I mean the want of proper
employment--entirely harmless to young women? It surely cannot be.
2. She should love the concerns and cares of domestic life, because no
ordinary employment contributes more, on the whole, to female health.
Are not, then, home, and the domestic concerns of home, desirable? Are
they not agreeable? Or if not, should not every young woman strive to
make them so? How then does it happen that an idea of meanness is
attached to them? How does it happen that almost every young woman who
can, gets rid of them--as almost every young man does of farming and
other manual labor.
4. Home affords to young women the means and opportunities of
intellectual improvement. I do not mean to affirm, that the progress
they can make in mere science, amid domestic concerns, will be quite as
great in a given time--say one year--as it might be in many of our best
schools. But I do mean to say, that it might be rapid enough for every
practical purpose. I might say, also, that young women who study a
little every day under the eye of a judicious mother, and teach that
little to their brothers and sisters, will be more truly wise at the
end of their pupilage, than they who only study books in the usual old
fashioned--I might say, rather, new fashioned--manner. It is in these
circumstances more strikingly true than elsewhere, that
5. But once more. She who is employed in the domestic circle, is more
favorably situated--I mean, if the domestic circle is what it should
be--for social improvement, than she could be elsewhere. She may not,
it is true, hold so much converse on the fashions--or be a means of
inventing, or especially of retailing, so much petty scandal--as in
some other situation, or in other circumstances. Still, the society of
home will be better and more truly refined, than if it were more
hollow, and affected, and insincere--in other words, made up of more
fashionable materials. If to be fashionable is to distort nature as
much as possible--and if the most fashionable society is that which is
thus distorted in the highest degree--then it must be admitted that
home cannot always be the best place for the education of young women.
6. But, lastly, young women should love domestic life, and the care and
society of the young, because it is, without doubt, the intention of
Divine Providence that they should do so; and because home, and the
concerns of home, afford the best opportunities and means of moral
improvement.
Are we the slaves of appetite? Here is the place for learning the art
of self-government. Are we fretful? Here we may learn patience: for a
great fund of patience is often demanded; and the more so as we are
apt, here, to be off our guard, and to yield to our unhappy feelings.
This home school is--after all which has been said of schools and
education--not only the first and best school, especially for females,
but emphatically _the_ school. It is the nursery from which are to
be transplanted, by and by, the plants which are to fill, and beautify,
and perfect--if any perfection in the matter is attained--all our
gardens and fields, and render them the fields and gardens of the Lord.
Ton much has not been--too much cannot be--said, it appears to me, in
favor of this home department of female education--especially as a
means of religious improvement.
Young women thus trained, would not only be most fitly prepared for the
employment which, as a general rule, they are to follow for life, but
for every other employment to which they can, in the good providence of
God, ever be called. No matter what is to be their situation--no matter
even if it is merely mechanical, as in some factory, or as an
amanuensis--this apprenticeship in the family is not only highly
useful, but, as it seems to me, indispensable. Is not mind, and health,
and self-government--yes, and self-knowledge, too--as indispensable to
the individual who is confined to a bench or desk, as to any person who
is more active? Nay, are they not even much more so--since sedentary
employments have, in themselves, as respects mind and character, a
downward, and narrowing, and contracting tendency?
CHAPTER XVII.
FRUGALITY AND ECONOMY.
Economy is another old fashioned word, which, like the thing for which
it stands, is fast going into disrepute; and in these days, it will
require no little moral courage in him who has any thing of reputation
at stake, to commend it--and above all, to commend it to young women.
What have they to do with economy? thousands might be disposed to ask,
were the subject urged upon their attention.
"Is there not something connected with the idea of economy, which
tends, necessarily, to narrow the mind and contract the heart?" This
question, too, is often asked, even by those whom age and experience
should have taught better things.
What can be more abundant, for example, than air and water? Yet is
there one particle too much of either of them? Is there one particle
more than is just necessary to render the earth what it was designed to
be? Such a thing may be said, I acknowledge, by the ignorant, and
short-sighted, and incautious. They vent their occasional complaints,
even against the Ruler of the skies, because the windows of heaven are,
for a time, shut up, and the rain falls not; and yet these very persons
are constrained to admit, in their more sober moments, that all is
ordered about right.
A great deal has been said, and no small number of words wasted, in
endeavoring to show the folly of spending two pence to save one;
whereas, to do so, in some circumstances, may be our highest wisdom. If
it be important to learn the art of _saving_--the art of being
_frugal_--then the art should be acquired, even if it costs
something in the acquisition. No one thinks of reaping the full reward
of adult labor in any occupation, the moment he begins to put his hand
to it, as a mere apprentice. Does he not thus, in learning his
occupation or trade--especially during the first years--spend two pence
to save one? Does not all preparation for the future, obviously involve
the same necessity?
I would certainly urge a young girl who was careless about pins,
needles, &c., to form the habit of picking up every one she found. I
would do so, to prevent her prodigal habits from extending to other
matters, and affecting and injuring her whole character. But I would
also do so, to cure the bad habit already existing. More than even
this; I advise every young woman who finds herself addicted to habits
which are opposed to a just frugality and economy, to begin the work of
eradicating them, without waiting for the promptings of her mother and
friends. Nor let her, for a moment, fear the imputation of meanness; it
is sufficient for her that she is doing what she knows to be right.
Good habits, as well as bad ones, like virtues and vices, are apt to go
in company. If one is allowed, others are apt to follow. First, those
most nearly related; next, those more remotely so; and finally,
perhaps, the whole company.
I would not dwell long on a subject like this, in a book for young
women, were I not assured that the case requires it. I see young women
every where, especially among the middling and higher classes, and in
great numbers too, exceedingly improvident; and not a few of them,
wasteful. The world seems to be regarded as a great store-house which
can never be exhausted, let them be as extravagant as they may. They
forget, entirely, the vulgar but correct adage, that "always taking out
of the meal tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom"-and
seem to take it for granted there is no bottom to their resources.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SYSTEM.
There is hardly any thing which the majority of our young women hate--
frugality and economy, and the study of themselves, perhaps, excepted--
so much as _system_. In this respect a few of our best schools
have, within a few years, attempted something; and, in a few instances,
with success. I could mention several schools for females, whose
teachers have done much more good by the habits of order and system
they have inculcated and endeavored to form, than by the sciences they
have taught.
I know, full well, that here and there a house-keeper, convinced in her
conscience that she can do vastly more for herself and others, as well
as do it better, by means of system, than without it, attempts
something like innovation upon the usual random course which prevails
about her. She resolves to have her hours of labor, her hours of
recreation, and her hours of reading and visiting. She believes life is
long enough for all the purposes of life. She is resolved to be
systematic on Sabbath and on week days; in the common details of the
family; in dress; and in regard to the hours of rising, meals and rest.
But she has a herculean task to accomplish--no small part of which is,
to bring her husband and the other members of her family to co-operate
with her. Yet, amid every discouragement, she perseveres, and at length
succeeds. Is not such a victory worth securing?
Let the young woman who has such a person as I have just described, for
her mother, rejoice in it. She can never be too grateful, not only to
her mother, but to God. Her life is likely to be of thrice the usual
value. Our daughters who are blessed with such mothers, may become as
polished corner stones in a temple--worthy of themselves, of those who
educate them, and of God.
But let not those who have been less fortunate, in respect to maternal
training and influence, utterly despair. Convinced of the general
correctness of the views here advanced, and desirous of entering on the
work of reform, let them take courage, and begin it immediately. Though
the mother, by her influence in the early formation of character, is
almost omnipotent, she is not quite so. Though the Ethiopian cannot
change his skin, nor the leopard his spots, still it is not utterly
impossible for those to do well who have been long accustomed to do
evil. "What has been done," you know, "_can_ be done." Make this
maxim your motto, and go forward in the work of self-education. But
remember to begin, in the first place, with the smaller matters of
life; and to conquer in one point or place of action, before you begin
with another. And, lastly, remember not to rely wholly on your own
strength. You are, indeed, to work--and to work with all your might;
but it is always God that worketh in you, when any thing effectual is
accomplished, in the way of improvement.
CHAPTER XIX.
PUNCTUALITY.
She spends the afternoon with her friend, and her services are very
acceptable. But ere she is aware, the bell at the railroad depot rings
for passengers to Boston. A few moments are spent in getting ready and
in exchanging the parting salutation with those friends who, though
aware of the danger of her being left, have not the honest plainness to
urge her to make speed. She is, at length, under way; but on arriving
at the depot, lo! the cars have started, and are twenty or thirty rods
distant.
What can she do? "Time and tide," and railroad cars, "wait for none."
It is in vain that she waves her handkerchief; the swift-footed
vehicles move on, and are soon out of sight! She returns, much
distressed, to the house of her sick friend, unfit to render her any
further service-to say nothing of the mischief she is likely to do by
exciting her painful sympathies.
But how and when is she to get home? There are no public means of
conveyance back to the city till to-morrow morning, and the expense of
a private conveyance seems to her quite beyond her means.
How could I be so late? she says to herself. How could I run the risk
of being thus left? Why was I not in season? What will my husband
think--especially as I came off without saying any thing to him about
coming? But this, though much to distress her, is not all, nor the
most. Her poor bade! what will become of that? Her friends endeavor to
soothe her by diverting her mind--but to no purpose, or nearly none:
she is half distracted, and can do nothing but mourn over her folly in
being so late.
But the weather is mild, and all is propitious without, except that it
is likely to be rather dark; and by means of the efforts of thoughtful
friends, a coach is fitted out with a careful driver, to carry her home
this very evening. It will take five hours in all; and as it is now
six, she will reach home at about eleven. The infant will not greatly
suffer before that time.
Finding herself fairly on the road, her feelings are somewhat composed,
and she just now begins to think what her husband will do, when he
comes from the shop at seven, and finds she has not arrived. She is
afraid he will be at the extra pains and expense to come after her; and
perhaps in the darkness pass by her, and go on to Lowell.
And her fears are partly realized. After much anxiety and some
complaining--which, however, I will not undertake to justify--the
husband is on the road with a vehicle, going to Lowell to assist her in
getting home. They meet about half way from place to place, and the
drivers recognize each other--though rather more than, in the darkness,
could have been expected. The coach from Lowell returns, and that from
Boston, taking in both passengers, wheels them back in haste to their
home. In their joy to find matters no worse, they forget to recriminate
each other, and think only of the timid sister with whom the infant was
left in charge: for in the hurry of getting off, the husband had made
no provision for quieting her fears of being alone. She passes the
time, however, in much less mental agitation than might have been
expected, and takes as good care as she can, of a fretful, crying,
half-starved babe. As the clock strikes one, the family are all quiet
in bed, and endeavoring to sleep.
How much uneasiness is here caused by being just about one minute (and
no more) too late! And whence came it? Not by her not knowing she was
running a risk by being tardy. Not that she had no apprehensions of
evil. Not because her conscience was uneducated, or unfaithful. It was
neither, nor any of these. There was, in the first place, a little want
of decision. She suffered herself to vacillate between a sense of duty
and the inclination to say a few words more, or bestow another parting
kiss. And in the second place, it was the wretched habit she had always
indulged, of delaying and deferring every thing she put her head or her
hand to, till the very last moment.
I will give you a brief but correct account of her general habits. Not
that the picture is a very uncommon one, but that you may view it in
connection with the anecdote I have related, and thus get a tolerable
idea of the inconveniences to which the wretched habit of which I have
spoken, is continually exposing her.
She makes it a rule--no, I will not say that, for she has no rules, but
she has a sort of expectation on the subject--to rise at five o'clock.
Yet I do not suppose she is up at five, six times in the year. She is
never awake at that timer or but seldom, unless she is awakened. Her
husband, indeed, makes it a sort of rule to wake her at that hour; but
he, alas, poor man! has no roles for himself or others; and if he
undertakes to awaken her at five, it is usually ten or fifteen minutes
afterward; and if she is let alone, she is often in bed till half past
five--oftener, indeed, than up earlier. The breakfast hour is six; but
I never knew the family to sit down at six. It is ten minutes, fifteen
minutes, thirty minutes, and sometimes forty-five minutes after six,
before the breakfast is on the table. The fire will not burn, and the
tea is not ready; or the milk or cream for the latter has not arrived;
or something or other is the matter--so she says, and so she believes--
and indeed sometimes so it is.
The dinner time is half past twelve-that is, professedly so; but it is
not once in twenty times that they sit down much before one o'clock--
and I have known it to be even later. So it is with supper; and I might
add, with every thing else. If an engagement is made, directly or
indirectly, positively or only implied, it is never fulfilled at the
time. She is never in her seat at church, till almost every body else
is in, and the services have commenced; although the kind, but too
indulgent parson waits some five or ten minutes for his whole
congregation--whom, alas! he has unwittingly trained to delay. In
short, she does nothing, and performs nothing, punctually, not even
going to bed; for this is deferred to a very late hour-sometimes till
near midnight.
Nor are her sufferings--though they are severe--from her unhappy habit,
the end of the matter. I have already more than intimated that her
companion has caught the disease; but it is still more visible in the
conduct of her sons and daughters. They, like herself, seldom do any
thing at the proper time. They are never punctual in their engagements,
nor decided in their conduct. I know not, however, what the daughters
may yet do--several of them being quite young. If they should chance to
meet with better instructions than they are accustomed to receive--
should take warning, and do all they can in the way of self-
improvement--they may be able to break the chains of an inveterate and
almost unconquerable habit, and make themselves useful in their day and
generation.
I do think, most sincerely, that if all the rest of the world were
disorderly, or fell short in matters of punctuality, the young woman
should not do so. Let her, in every duty, learn to be in time. Let her
resolve to do every thing a little before the time arrives; nothing, a
moment after it.
The keeper of a boarding house, who is at the same time the principal
of one of our most flourishing schools for both males and females,
makes it a point to have every one of his boarders in their seats at
dinner, when the clock strikes twelve, which is the appointed hour.
But--to return to other habits than those which pertain to eating and
drinking--this want of thoroughness, of which I am speaking, wherever
it exists in a young woman, will show itself in all or nearly all she
does.
Perhaps site is sewing. She is anxious to get her work along; and
though she know, how it ought to be done, she ventures to slight it
especially if it is the property of another. Or having done it well
till she comes near the end, the place where, perhaps, every thing
ought to be particularly firm and secure--ought to be done thoroughly--
she leaves a portion of it half done; and the garment gives way before
it is half worn.
Or she is cooking; and though every thing else is well boiled, a single
article is not well done--which gives an appearance of negligence to
the whole. At any rate, it is not done well; and she gets the credit of
not being a thorough house-keeper.
One might suppose a young woman would find out the mischiefs that
result from a want of thoroughness, by the inconvenience which
inevitably results from it. It is not very convenient or comfortable,
to be obliged to do a thing wholly over again, or suffer from want,
because a piece of work, very trifling in itself, was not done
thoroughly. Nor is it very convenient to go and wash one's hands every
time a lamp is used, because it was not thoroughly cleaned or duly put
in order, when it should have been. Nor is it easy to clean an elegant
carpet which has become soiled, or replace a valuable astral lamp, or
mirror, which has been broken, simply for the want of thorough
attention in those who have the care of these things. These little
inconveniences, constantly recurring, might rouse a person to
reflection, one would think, as effectually as occasional larger ones.
We do not, however, always find it so.
CHAPTER XX.
EXERCISE.
The muscles, or moving power of the body. Their number and character.
Philosophy and necessity of exercise. Why young women should study
these. Various kinds of exercise. 1. Walking. 2. Gardening and
agriculture. 3. House-keeping. 4. Riding. 5. Local exercises.--
Difficulty of drawing the public attention to this subject. The slavery
of fashion. Consequences of the of fashionable neglect of exercise. A
common but shocking sight.
It should not be forgotten, that the human body is moved from place to
place, at the direction of the will, through the intervention of what
are called muscles--of which there are in connection with the whole
human frame, from four hundred to five hundred.
Now it is well known to those who have studied the subject of exercise,
that, though walking is of inestimable importance--second, in all
probability, to no other form of mere exercise--it is, nevertheless, of
far the most value, when it is undertaken and pursued with pleasure.
While, therefore, I recommend it to young women, I do it in the hope
that they will not regard it as task-work--as mere drudgery. I hope
they will regard it as a source of pleasure and happiness.
Let not the hardy, healthy young woman alone, be employed in this
manner. It is useful and necessary, indeed, to her; but it is still
more so to her in whom, to a light skin with light eyes and hair, are
joined a slender frame, a narrow chest, and an unnatural and sickly
delicacy. Whether this delicacy is the result of staying in the house,
almost entirely secluded from light, air, and the extremes of heat and
cold, or is inherited, makes very little difference. She who has it
needs a great deal of exercise.
The reasons why this employment is so healthy, are many and various.
One is found in the fact, that it requires such a variety of exercise.
Like farming and gardening, it calls into action, in the course of a
day, and especially in the course of a week, nearly every considerable
muscle of the body.
All these exercises seem, at first view, to have some advantages over
walking. It should be remembered however, that nearly every muscle, and
tendon, and bone in the whole human frame, is agitated, if it is not
employed, in walking; and if the limbs are employed much the most,
still the continued action of the whole body, though gentle, is in a
few hours quite sufficient for all the purposes of health.
It is scarcely possible that a young woman twenty years of age, has not
had ample opportunities for learning to do all kinds of house-work,
provided it has been her fixed resolution to improve them; and I am
fully assured that house-keeping, actively and cheerfully pursued, in
all its parts, is sufficient to secure a tolerable measure of health to
every individual. And yet I am equally confident, that if walking, or
out-of-door labor, were superadded to this, in the way I have proposed
and recommended, she would derive from it many important advantages,
besides being still healthier. Indeed, no person, in any employment
whatever, is so healthy as to exclude all possibility of further
improvement. It is not yet known how healthy an individual may become.
The brain and nervous system require observation and reflection; and
even, in my view, considerable hard study. This is their appropriate
and necessary exercise. There are, indeed, those who exercise their
brains too much; but for one who suffers from thinking too much, a
dozen suffer from thinking too little.
The stomach and intestines require such food as will call them into
proper action. That which is highly difficult of digestion may cause
them to over-act; and this, to those whose vital powers are feeble,
would be injurious. On the other hand, that which is too easy of
digestion, will not afford the stomach exercise enough; and hence, in
time, if its use is long continued, will be equally injurious. But once
more. Concentrated substances--substances, I mean, consisting of pure
nutriment, or that which is nearly so--such as oil, sugar, gum, &c.--do
not afford the right kind of exercise to the stomach; for it is the
appropriate work of this organ, and of the other internal organs--and
not of machinery of human invention--to separate the nutritious part
from that which is innutritious; and, therefore, that food affords the
best sort of labor to the stomach which contains, along with a full
supply of nutriment, a good deal of innutritious substance.
The exercise of the lungs consists not only in their full and free
expansion in breathing, but in speaking, singing, &c., and even in
laughing. Physiologists also consider sneezing, coughing and crying,
especially the latter, as having their advantages, in early infancy,
and perhaps, in same circumstances, even afterward.
In like manner do the eye and the ear, the tongue and the teeth, the
hands and the face--and indeed every part of the system--require their
appropriate exercise. This is not true of the merest infancy and
childhood alone, but also, for the most part, of youth and manhood.
Conversation, to a certain extent, is, for aught I know, as necessary
to the health of the vocal organs, as to that of the lungs. Nor are the
benefits of mastication confined wholly to the process of digestion. It
is fully believed by distinguished physiologists, that the teeth
themselves will last longer for being considerably used; and they seem
to be borne out in this conclusion by facts. But if this is the case,
what are we to think of the importance of light to the eye, sound to
the ear, employment to the hands, &c.?
Few things are more pitiable, than the sight of young persons of either
sex, so entirely enslaved to fashion, that they dare not labor in the
garden, or the kitchen, or even walk briskly, lest somebody should
observe and speak of it. It is not to be wondered at--trained as the
young of both sexes are, to demand incessant excitement--that they
should dislike walking, and every thing else of the more active kind,
and sigh for the chaise, the coach, the sleigh, the car and the
steamboat; but it does seem to me strange, that contrary to nature,
they should seek their happiness in passive exercises alone, forgetful
of their limbs, and hands, and feet. It is passing strange, that any
tyrant should be able--even Fashion herself--so to change the whole
current of human feeling, as to make a sprightly buoyant young girl of
ten years of age, become at thirteen a grave, staid or mincing young
woman, unable--rather, unwilling--to move except in a certain style,
and then only with an effort scarcely exceeded by the efforts of those
who are suffering from inquisitorial tortures.
No young woman who has a conscientious desire for improvement, and who
is acquainted with the merest elements of physiological knowledge,
could or would submit, for one day, to such abominable tyranny. She
could not but be afraid thus to disobey the natural and reasonable laws
of her Maker.
CHAPTER XXI.
REST AND SLEEP.
Why rest and sleep are needed. Sleep a condition. We should sleep in
the night. Moral tendency of not doing so. Is there any moral character
in such things? Of rest without sleep. Good habits in regard to sleep.
Apartments for sleep. Air. Bed. Covering. Temperature. Night clothing.
Advice of Macnish on the number of persons to a bed. Preparation for
sleep. Suppers. The more we indulge in sleep, the more sleep we seem to
require. The reader indulged to study laws of rest and sleep. An
appeal.
The moving powers of the human body are so constructed by the grand
Mover of all things, that they require rest as well as action. And of
the many hundreds of muscles and tendons in the living system, it is
not known that there is one which could continue its action,
uninterruptedly, for any considerable time, without serious injury.
Even the muscular fibres of the heart rest a part of the time, between
the beats and pulsations. Whether the brain--which is of course without
muscular fibres--can act incessantly in the production of thought, is a
question which I believe is not yet settled by meta-physicians. One
thing we do know, however, which is, that if the other organs suffer
for want of rest, we soon find that by the law of sympathy and
otherwise, the brain and nervous system suffer along with them; and if
our wakefulness is greatly protracted, they sometimes suffer very
severely.
I have said that all the moving powers of the body require rest. They
do; and in the young, a good deal of it. It is in vain for mankind--the
young especially--to abridge their hours of sleep, whether for selfish
or benevolent purposes. Sleep is made by the Creator a condition of our
being and happiness; and he who complies not with this condition, is
unworthy of the boon.
Two colonels in the French army, sometime ago, had a dispute whether it
was most safe to march in the heat of the day, or in the evening. To
ascertain this point, they obtained permission of the commanding
officer to put their respective plans into execution. Accordingly, the
one with his division marched during the day, although it was in the
heat of summer, and rested all night. The other, with his men, slept in
the day-time, and marched during the evening and part of the night. The
result was, that the first performed a journey of six hundred miles
without losing a single man or horse; while the latter lost most of his
horses, and several of his men.
Of course, the inference from this, and other similar facts, is, that
night is the time for sleep, and not day. Is it said that every person
knows this? But every person does not practise accordingly. There are
those who either do _not_ know the fact--and not a few young
women, too; may be found among the number--or who, knowing it, do not
act according to their knowledge. Is it not more charitable to conclude
they do not know the fact?
Franklin, indeed, once undertook to show, in his humorous way, that the
inhabitants of Paris did not know that the sun gave light at its first
rising. Whether they did know it or not--or whether or not they were
culpable for their ignorance, provided it was voluntary--shall hold my
readers to be as truly guilty of doing _that_ wrong which is the
result of their own voluntary ignorance, as if their minds were really
enlightened. The young woman who goes to bed so late that she cannot
wake till it has been day for some time--or who darkens her room on
purpose that the day-light may not interrupt her repose when it comes--
and who knows, at the same time, that it is wrong to sleep by day-
light, except from the most absolute necessity--is as truly guilty, as
if she slept by day-light with her windows open.
I believe the night is long enough for sleep in any latitude not higher
than fifty degrees; and comparatively few of the human family reside
much farther than this towards the poles.
The young woman who finds herself inclined to sleep after day-light,
should resolve to break the habit as soon as possible. In order to do
this, however, she should believe herself able to do it.
Here it will be rational to ask whether, after all, there is any moral
character in the error, if it be one, of sitting up an hour later than
usual, and then making it up by sleeping an hour after the arrival of
day-light;--whether it is not a matter of _propriety_, merely,
rather than a question of positive right or wrong in the sight of
Heaven.
This question I have answered in the chapter on Conscientiousness--to
which, in order to prevent repetition, I might refer the reader. If
there be a sort of actions to which no character, good or bad, can
justly be attached, then what did the apostle mean in requiring that
_whatever we do_ should be done to the glory of God? and where is
the line to be drawn between those actions which are too small or too
trifling to be worthy of having any right or wrong attached to them,
and those which are not? But if every thing we do is either right or
wrong, then there is a right and a wrong in regard to the particular
class of actions of which I am just now treating.
The object of sleep should be to restore us, and fit us for renewed
action. We may rest, to some extent, without sleep; as when we throw
ourselves upon a sofa, or sit in an easy chair. Indeed, there is no
hour of the day in which some portions of the moving powers are not
resting, more or less. Still we cannot be wholly restored, in body and
mind, without the soothing influence of
Every young woman should regulate her habits in regard to sleep and
rest--not less than all her other habits--in such a way as will tend
most to the good of her whole nature and as will consequently tend most
to the glory of God. In other words, every person should be governed,
in this matter, by true philosophy and Christian principle. This would
lead to the following axioms or conclusions, every one of which is
sustained by high authority.
The bed ought to be rather hard; but it should, at any rate, be cool.
Soft, yielding feather beds, in which the body sinks deeply, are very
injurious, on account of the unnatural heat and perspiration they are
sure to induce. It is of little consequence what the material of your
bed is, if it be light, dry and porous, and not too soft. Straw, grass,
husks, hair, and a great variety of other things, have been employed.
Almost any thing--I repeat it--is better than feathers. The same
remarks will apply to pillows.
Another reason is, that ratified air not only contains less oxygen in a
given volume, as I have already said, but also appears to admit more
readily of the admixture and thorough diffusion of bad gases. The
carbonic acid gas which is formed by breathing, settles the more
readily towards the floor, in proportion to the general density of the
atmosphere of the room; and if the bed-room be large, so that it does
not accumulate in such a quantity as to rise higher than the bedstead,
it is less likely to be breathed over again, than if the atmosphere
were more rare.
But there is still another reason for having our bed-clothes cool--
though it is substantially the same with that mentioned in a preceding
paragraph for having light rooms, beds, and light covering. We are
greatly debilitated by sleeping unnecessarily warm. Our vital powers
should be trained to generate a good deal of heat; and what they have
been trained to do, they should continue to perform. All the heat, I
say, therefore, which the body will manufacture for itself, readily, it
should be permitted to do. But the moment we depend, unnecessarily, on
external means of warmth--as too much or too soft and warm bed
clothing, and too warm an atmosphere--that moment our internal organs
begin to be enervated, in a greater or less degree, whether we are
sensible of it or not.
We should not sleep in the clothes we have worn during the day. This is
not on account of the heat it may induce, but on account of the bad air
which our clothing confines. By having extra clothes for the night, and
those very few indeed, and taking a little pains with those we have
worn during the day--to hang them up and air them properly--we may do
much towards keeping the pores of our bodies open, and preserving the
skin in a clean state, and in a condition to perform its accustomed
work.
The cold bath at going to bed, taken to reduce our heat, because we are
too warm, is of rather doubtful utility. Some may use it with entire
safety; but to the feeble, or those who have been greatly over-heated
or over-fatigued, it would be hazardous.
Some will say, that at this rate they should not get sleep enough
during the night; and should, as a consequence, either be dull during
their waking hours, or be obliged to take a nap in the day-time. But if
our hard-laboring people who rise at four o'clock in the summer, find
time enough to sleep--most of them--without a nap in the day-time,
surely they whose labor is not so hard, can do it. They cannot, I well
know, if they sit up till ten or eleven o'clock at night.
If any one desires to glorify God in every thing she does, let her
attend to the conditions I have mentioned. If she finds that in rising
at daylight she does not get sleep enough, let her go to bed a little
earlier. We ought to sleep about as much before midnight as after; and
she who goes to bed at eight, and rises at four, will be pretty sure to
get sleep enough. Few if any persons over twelve years of age, need
more than eight hours sleep; and the greater proportion not so much.
Here I will mention one thing which does not seem to be generally
known. The more we sleep, if we increase our sleep by degrees, the more
we may. How far the time for sleep may be thus extended, I do not know.
There are, indeed, circumstances which may make the same individual
require less or more sleep, independent of the habit of indulgence:
still it is true, as a general fact, that we may sleep as much or as
little as we please.
When we increase the hours of sleep, however, it does not follow that
we actually _sleep_ more in the same proportion. Let an active
individual, who has been accustomed to six hours, suddenly confine
herself to four. Will her actual sleep be abridged one third? By no
means. Nature will endeavor to make up for the loss of time by inducing
sounder sleep.
In this, however, she is only in part successful. For those who sleep
so very soundly, often sleep _too_ sound. We are sometimes
conscious, when we awake from an over-sound sleep, that we are not well
refreshed; but whether conscious of it or not, it is so. Macnish says--
"That sleep from which we are easily roused, is the healthiest; very
profound slumber partakes of the nature of apoplexy."
A person who, having been in the habit of sleeping six hours in twenty-
four, suddenly reduces the number to four, will, probably, for a time,
sleep as much in four hours as she slept before in about five, or five
and a half. But the _quality_ of these five or five and a half
hours' sleep will be inferior, and continue so, unless she arouses
herself to an increased activity of her intellectual powers, and
reduces the quantity of her food and drink.
I wish every reader would take this subject of wasting time in sleep
into serious, and conscientious, and prayerful consideration. Let her
remember that her time is not hers, any more than she herself is her
own; that both are "bought with a price"--an amazing price, too! How
can she, then, waste time-a single moment of it? Yet people will do it.
Hundreds, and thousands, and millions, will do it. Some will do it--
many, I fear--who have professed the Christian name, and who believe
that they bear in their bodies the marks of their dying Lord and
Master.
I will close this chapter by briefly summing up what has been said. Let
your sleep be in the night; not in the day-time. Let it be, moreover,
in the _middle_ of the night, as much as possible. To sit up till
near midnight, and to get up just after midnight, are perhaps equally
injurious, though not by any means equally common. Spend the close of
each day at home; and go to bed early, with an empty or nearly an empty
stomach, a cheerful temper, a quiet mind, and a good conscience. Let
the air be pure, yourself pure, your clothing and bed simple and cool,
and your room also cool. Wake with the first rays of the morning in
summer, and about the same hour in winter. Get up as soon as you awake;
and if your sleep has been insufficient, go to rest a little earlier
the succeeding evening. Thus will you at once discharge your duty, and
obtain peace here and hereafter.
CHAPTER XXII
INDUSTRY.
Of all lazy persons, however, I dislike most to see a lazy young woman.
Destined by her Creator at once to charm, instruct and improve the
world around her, by her looks, her words and her actions--and this to
a degree which no female has ever yet attained--how exceedingly painful
is it to see her floating along the stream of inaction or
insignificance, without making one considerable effort to arouse her
faculties--bodily, mental and moral--from their half dormant condition.
Too many females who are trained in the bosom of ease and abundance,
have no idea of any attempts at benevolent effort, or even of active,
untiring industry. If they are not more selfish than the other sex,
they are scarcely less so. They live but for themselves, and seem to
desire no more. Granting, as we sometimes do, that this is the fault of
their education, is it therefore the less pitiable?
I must insist on even more than this. She ought to be able, in point of
bodily efficiency, to do something for the support of others; and not
merely something, but a great deal. I am not ignorant of the low rate
of female wages--disproportioned, altogether so, to their comparative
value in the scale of human happiness. And yet, with all necessary
abatements, I hold that all healthy females ought to be able to support
themselves, should necessity require it, and to aid in supporting
others.
An aged woman, who at ninety was often found at her spinning wheel, and
always at active employment--though by no means indigent--was
accustomed to say, that every person ought to strain every nerve to get
property as long as life lasts, as a matter of duty. I would not say
quite so much as this; but I do say that every person, no matter what
may be her rank or circumstances, ought to be industrious, from early
life to the last moment. Such a person, male or female, will seldom
want means of support, and even of distributing "to him that needeth;"
but should such a thing happen, it is of no very great importance. She
will at least die with the consciousness of having spent her life in
active industry, and of having benefited somebody, though she may have
spent less on herself.
CHAPTER XXIII.
VISITING.
Far be it from me to say any such thing; for I know not to whom such
exercises, _as such exercises merely_, may or may not be necessary. That
they may be useful to many, cannot be doubted; but that they are far from
being useful, or even innocent, to _all_, is quite as certain.
There is nothing in this world--or hardly any thing, to say the least--
which should be done for the mere sake of doing it. We labor not for
the sake of laboring, alone; we eat not, and we drink not, for the
sake, merely, of eating and drinking--at least we should not, would we
obtain the whole benefit of eating and drinking; nor should we even
amuse ourselves for the sake alone of the amusement. Double ends are
often secured by single means; nay, almost always so. I speak now of
the woman, and not of the infant or the child.
Social visits among friends and neighbors, for the mere sake of the
passive enjoyment they afford in the earliest years of infancy, may do
exceedingly well as a preparation for the more active and more truly
Christian visits of maturer years and later life. They are useful in
elevating ourselves and others to a state where such visiting is not so
needful to our happiness.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MANNERS.
Miss Sedgwick, in her "Means and Ends," has treated the subject of
Manners in a happier way than any other writer with whom I am
acquainted. Perhaps her views are already familiar to most of my
readers; but lest they should not be so, and on account of their
excellency, I propose to give a brief abstract of some of them.
She complains, in the first place, that manners are too often
considered as certain forms to be taught, or certain modes of conduct
for which rules are to be made: and observes that some of the Greek
states maintained professors to teach manners; in connection with which
she immediately adds the following paragraph:
"If his tender mind be filled with veneration for his parents and
teachers, which consists in love and esteem, and a fear to offend them,
and with respect and good will to all people, that respect will of
itself teach _those ways_ which he observes to be most acceptable."
"I pray you to bear in mind, that manners are but manifestations of
character. I must premise that by manners I do not mean the polished
manners of the most highly educated and refined of other countries, nor
the deferential subservience of their debased classes--so pleasing to
those who prefer the homage to the friendship of their fellow
creatures.
"Manners, like every thing else in one's character and conduct, should
be based on religion. Honor all men, says the apostle. This is the
spring of good manners. It strikes at the very root of selfishness. It
is the principle by which we render to all ranks and ages their due. A
respect for your fellow beings, a reverence for them as God's creatures
and our brethren, will inspire that delicate regard to their rights and
feelings, of which good manners is the sign.
"If you have truth--not the truth of policy, but religious truth--your
manners will be sincere. They will have earnestness, simplicity and
frankness--the best qualities of manners. They will be free from
assumption, pretence, affectation, flattery and obsequiousness, which
are all incompatible with sincerity. If you have a goodly sincerity,
you will choose to appear no other nor better than you are--to dwell in
a true light."
I have often insisted that the Bible contains the only rules necessary
in the study of politeness--or in other words, that those who are the
real disciples of Christ, cannot fail to be truly polite. Nor have I
any reason for recalling this opinion; from which that of Miss Sedgwick
does not materially differ.
Not that the same forms will be observed by every follower of Christ,
in manifesting his politeness; all I insist on is, that every one will
be truly polite. Let me illustrate my views in a very plain manner.
But if every one is ready to perform the office which true politeness
would dictate--and is consequently truly polite--there will probably be
as many ways of manifesting these feelings, as there are individuals
present in the company.
One, for example, will give the stranger the best directions she can
without leaving the room; but will be in all respects exceedingly
particular. Another will go to the door, and there give the same
directions. A third will go with her into the street, and there
instruct her. A fourth will go with her to the first or second fork of
the road, and there give further directions. A fifth will send a boy
with her. A sixth will sketch the road plainly, though coarsely, with a
pencil; and mark, in a proper manner, the course she ought to pursue.
Each one will instruct her in an intelligent manner, so that there can
hardly remain the possibility of a mistake; but we see that there will
be a considerable difference in the form.
In short, let the young woman who would be truly polite, take her
lessons, not in the school of a hollow, heartless world, but in the
school of Jesus Christ. I know this counsel may be despised by the gay
and fashionable; but it will be much easier to despise it than to prove
it to be incorrect.
"Always think of the good of the whole, rather than of your own
individual convenience," says Mrs. Farrar, in her Young Ladies' Friend:
a most excellent rule, and one to which I solicit your earnest
attention. She who is thoroughly imbued with the gospel spirit, will
not fail to do so. It was what our Saviour did continually; and I have
no doubt that his was the purest specimen of good manners, or genuine
politeness, the world has ever witnessed--the politeness of Abraham
himself not excepted.
CHAPTER XXV.
HEALTH AND BEAUTY.
Dr. Bell's new work on Health and Beauty. Its value. Adam and Eve
probably very beautiful. Primitive beauty of our race to be yet
restored. Sin the cause of present ugliness. Never too late to reform.
Opinion of Dr. Rush. An important principle. The doctrine of human
perfectibility disavowed. Various causes of ugliness. Obedience to law,
natural and moral, the true source of beauty. Indecency and immorality
of neglecting cleanliness.
Nor was the task unworthy the efforts and pen of the gifted individual
by whom it was executed. Young women, of course, are inclined to set a
high value on beauty of form and feature, as well as to dread, more
than most other persons, what they regard as deformity. Surely they
ought to be glad of a work like that I have described.
Does any one ask, of what possible service it can be to know these
facts, when it is too late to make use of them? The truth is, it can
never be too late. There is no person so old that she cannot improve
her appearance, more or less, if she will but take the appropriate
steps. I do not, of course, mean to say, that at twenty or thirty years
of age a person can greatly alter the contour of the face, or the
symmetry of the frame; though I believe some thing can be done, even
in these respects. It was the saying of Dr. Rush, that husbands and
wives who live happily together, always come to resemble one another
more and more, in their very features; and he accounted for it on the
principle of an increased resemblance in their feelings, tastes or
dispositions. And there are probably few who have not observed how much
bad passions and bad habits distort the features of every body, at
every age. Then why should not Dr. Rush be right; and why should not
good feelings and good affections change the countenance, in a greater
or less degree, as well as bad ones? And what reason, then, can be
given why every young woman--certainly those who are far down in the
column of _teens_--cannot change her countenance for the better,
if she will take the necessary pains for it?
That she can do but little, is no reason why that little should not be
done. The very consideration that she can do but little, enhances the
importance of doing what she can. Let her remember this. Would that the
principle were universally remembered and applied! Would that it were
generally believed--and the belief acted upon--that the latter day
glory of the world is to be brought about in no other way than by
having every individual of every generation, through a long series of
generations, do all in his power, aided by wisdom and strength from on
high, to hasten it.
Nor do I believe that all mankind will ever become perfectly beautiful,
according to any particular standard of beauty. This were neither
useful nor desirable. There will probably be as great a variety of
features, and possibly, too, of size and symmetry, in the day of
millennial glory, as there is now.
It is not tight dressing alone which spoils the shape; but improper
exercise, neglect of exercise, over exercise--and a thousand other
things also. Nor is it the application of _rouge_ alone, which
spoils the beauty. There are a thousand physical transgressions that
dim the lustre of the eye, or sink it too deep in the socket, or
flatten it, or paint a circle round it. So of the face in general.
There are a thousand forms of transgression that take away the
carnation of the lip and cheek, and leave unnatural hues, not to say
pimples and furrows, in its stead.
But enough on this subject, for the present, if I have convinced the
reader whence her help, in this respect, is to come;--if I have
convinced her that, under God, she is to restore her beauty only by
becoming a true Christian; by having her whole being--body, intellect
and affections--brought into subjection to divine law, especially by a
prompt, and minute, and thorough obedience to all the laws of health
and life, as far as she understands them; and by diligent effort to
understand them better and better, as long as she lives; and, lastly,
by the smiles of Almighty God upon her labors and efforts.
CHAPTER XXVI.
NEATNESS AND CLEANLINESS.
Would that it were so! Would that our daughters and sisters--the
daughters and sisters of America, especially--were so far apprized of
this indispensable requisite, as to need no monitor on the subject!
But, unhappily, it is not so. Very far from it, on the contrary.
"By washing a small part of the person at a time, rubbing it well, and
then covering what is done, the whole may be washed in cold water, even
in winter time; and a glow may be produced after it, in a young and
healthy person.
"It is common for persons who are in the habit of sponging over with
cold water every morning, or of taking the shower or plunging bath, to
omit it when they have a slight cold, or sore throat, or a touch of
rheumatism; whereas, if it were properly done so as to produce a glow
all over the skin, their habitual ablutions would be the best remedy
for the beginnings of evil. * * * If not sure, in such a case, of
producing a glow after the use of the cold water, it will be better to
use the warm, in order to make the skin do its office freely. But to
cease your customary bathing at such times, is to increase all your
difficulties.
I have spoken of the vigor derived from cold bathing. This is gained in
two ways. First, _directly_, by the action of the muscles or
moving powers, which I have partially described in the chapter on
Exercise. Secondly, _indirectly_, through the medium of sympathy.
I know of no one thing which costs so little time and effort--(for the
work may be done after it has become natural and habitual, in twelve or
fifteen minutes)--which secures, at the same time, such an amount of
exercise and bodily vigor, as daily cold bathing.
The particular forms of bathing are numerous. Among these, are the
simple washing with the hand, spoken of by Mrs. Farrar; sponging;
immersion in a tub or stream; and the shower bath. All these, except,
of course, washing in a stream, may be done with cold, tepid, warm or
hot water; and may be continued for a greater or less time--although,
in general, the cold bath should be a quick operation.
The dust accumulates on the surface of our bodies much more readily,
and adheres much more firmly, and in much larger quantities, than is
usually supposed, and than by many would be credited. Mr. Buckingham,
the Oriental traveller, asserts that from two to three pounds of it are
sometimes removed from the whole surface of a person who has for some
time neglected bathing and washing, in a tropical climate; and this,
under some circumstances, may possibly have been the case. For not only
does the moisture of the skin favor its accumulation, but so also does
the oily substance continually poured out by the small bottle-shaped
glands--sebaceous glands, as they are called--which are found in the
skin in great numbers, with their mouths opening on its surface.
They should also be reminded that there is, somehow or other, (I know
not how, exactly,) a very general connection between external and
internal purity. It is exceedingly uncommon--I had almost said, quite
so--to find an individual who pays a daily close attention to neatness
and cleanliness of person and dress, who does not, at the same time,
possess a reputation which is not only above reproach, but also quite
above suspicion.
CHAPTER XXVII.
DRESS AND ORNAMENT.
1. We have no right to use that kind of dress which does not answer
well the purpose of a COVERING, ad long as we can lawfully obtain that
which would do it better. All fashions, moreover, which tend to remind
the beholder that our dress is _designed as a covering_, are
nearly as improper as those which do not effectually cover us.
And here let me say, with sufficient plainness, that there are such
fashions in existence; and that they ought to be shunned like the
plague. Does not the world in which we live, contain sources enough of
temptation, and avenues enough to vice, seduction and misery, without
increasing their number by our dress? [Footnote: I cannot refrain from
saying, in this place, that since I wrote the above paragraph, I have
received an excellent letter from a worthy minister of the gospel, on
the subject of female dress which, besides greatly confirming the views
I have expressed in this chapter, suggests the importance of having a
standard dress devised--to be formed on Christian principles, and made
fashionable by Christian example. If such a measure is desirable, it is
yours, young women, to put it in operation.]
I have said that the internal machinery of out bodies is the great
source of our heat. Foremost, perhaps, in this work, are the lungs, the
stomach, the brain and nervous system, and the circulatory system,
including the heart, arteries, veins and absorbents. Our moving powers
--the muscles and tendons--have, indeed, much to do with generating our
heat; but it is principally by the assistance which they render to the
digestive, the nutritive, the respiratory, the circulatory, and the
thinking machinery. The fat of our bodies has also something to do in
promoting our warmth; but it is only on the same principle as that by
which it is done by our clothing; that is to say, it prevents the heat
from being conducted off too rapidly.
But this is not all. They have not only the power of generating heat in
proportion to their healthiness, but also of resisting cold. Who does
not know that the living system, at ninety-eight degrees of Fahrenheit,
will resist a temperature nearly one hundred and fifty degrees lower
than this, [Footnote: During the present winter, the mercury in this
vicinity has ranged, in one or two instances, as low as 14 or 16
degrees below zero; which is 112 or 114 degrees below the heat of the
blood. In some parts of New England it has been 20 or 30 degrees
below.] and yet for some time not freeze? Perhaps this is done,
however, in the same way in which a more moderate amount of heat is
generated. Perhaps the increased muscular and nervous energy, and the
increased activity of the other organs, enable them to generate heat as
fast, as the increased cold around carries it off.
The evil of which I have spoken is, however, much oftener induced by
error in regard to the quantity of dress, than its quality. As to
quantity, we need no more than is just necessary, along with healthy
and vigorous exercise, to keep us from being sensibly cold or chilly.
Any amount beyond this, be its nature what it may, is debilitating, and
consequently more or less injurious.
But the form of our dress often does injury; as well as its material
and quantity. With some classes of our community, this is a greater
evil than either of the former; though with others, it is not.
All forms of dress which impede any kind of motion, especially those
which impede circulatory motion, are greatly injurious. It is, I
suppose, pretty well known, that all parts of the skin are full of
minute blood vessels, chiefly veins; in addition to which, there are
also a great number of veins still larger, immediately under the skin,
and connected with it, as may be observed by looking at the hands or
limbs of very aged or very lean persons. Now the tendency or course of
the blood in all the veins, is towards the heart; and this course is
slower or more rapid, according as the skin is more or less active,
healthy and free. A rapid course of the blood in these veins, is
desirable, because it has become, in the progress of its circulation,
greatly impure, and in the same proportion unfit to minister to the
purposes of health--and needs to go on to the heart, and through that
to the lungs, to be relieved of its load of impurities.
For in compressing this part of the frame, though we do not impede the
action of _so much_ blood in its return to the heart as might be
supposed, we do a great deal more injury in many other respects than is
usually known. I must advert to the various items of this injury.
This is the case when the lungs are compressed during a single breath:
how great, then, is the evil, when the compression continues an hour--
during which period we probably breathe ten or twelve hundred times!
How much greater still, when it is continued through the waking hours
of a day, say fifteen or sixteen--in which period we breathe nearly
twenty thousand times--and a young woman of twelve to fifteen years of
age, probably more! But think of the evil as extended to a year, or
three hundred and sixty-five days! or to a whole life of thirty, fifty
or seventy years!
How much poisoned blood must go through the living system in sixty or
seventy years, should the injured system last so long! And how many bad
feelings, and how much severe pain and suffering, and chronic and acute
disease, must almost inevitably be undergone!
Let no young woman forget, moreover, that she lives, not for herself
alone, but for others; and that if she injures health and life by
improper dress, she does it not for herself alone, but for all those
who shelter their abuses under her example, as well as for all those
who may hereafter be more immediately influenced by her present
conduct. Let her neither forget her responsibility nor her
accountability. Would to God that she could see this matter as it truly
is, and as she will be likely to see it in years to come!
Now, are there not a great number of articles of clothing worn, whose
use cannot be justified on these principles? Does not the greater part
of human time and labor which is expended on dress, both by the maker
and the wearer, go to answer other purposes than these? Is it not
expended for mere ornament? And is such an expenditure right?
In short, I suppose that our duty is, to dress in such a way, if our
circumstances permit it, as will be best for the purposes of merely
clothing, tempering and defending our bodies. That material, that
quantity, and those forms of dress, which we suppose best accomplish
this, should be adopted as fast as they are known.
And does there remain no room for industry when personal ornaments are
excluded? As well might it be said that the exclusion of all drinks but
water, would strike a death-blow at industry. Is there nothing left for
people to do, because you take away ornament?
I do not deny, that he who makes two stalks of grain grow where only
one grew before, is a public benefactor. I do not deny that, for
certain purposes in the arts--in architecture, especially--he who
polishes a gem, or a block of marble, may also be a public benefactor.
This is a very different thing from preparing and applying ornaments to
our persons; and may be, to some extent, useful. But I am still
assured, that those who make a person healthier than before, or improve
his intellect, or are a means of awakening in him a love to God and
man, and of promoting its growth where it is already awakened, are
benefactors to the world in a degree infinitely higher, and add to its
_true_ riches almost infinitely more.
If the richer part of the community have money to spare, why should
they not spend it in increasing the health, the knowledge, and the
morality of the needy around them--by giving employment to those who
are capable of promoting these blessings, and who want employment?
That many young women, who read this chapter, will wholly lay aside
their ornaments, and fit themselves, as fast as possible, for the noble
purpose of ornamenting those around them, by promoting their physical,
intellectual and moral well being, can hardly be expected. But I do
hope that I shall lead a few to expend less of time and money in
dressing and ornamenting their persons than heretofore, and more in
dressing and ornamenting the immortal mind, as well as more in
promoting health of body.
I cannot but hope to live to see the day, when every person who
professes the name of Jesus Christ, and not a few who make no
professions at all, will entertain similar views in regard to the
purposes of dress and their own duty in relation to it, to those which
I have endeavored to inculcate. Such a day must surely come, sooner or
later; and I hope that those who believe this, will make it their great
rule to _expend as little on themselves as possible_, and yet
answer the true intentions of the Creator respecting themselves.
What else can be expected, however, when those who should be the
guardians of the public taste--and who should, as Christian citizens,
strive with all their might to elevate it--engage in pandering to the
follies, not to say the depravities, of the age? Let young women rise
above themselves, and escape the snares thus laid for them by those who
ought to be their guides to the paths of wisdom, and virtue, and
happiness.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
DOSING AND DRUGGING.
This, though better than to take medicine, is yet a very bad practice;
for although momentary relief is secured in this way, it never fails to
increase the unpleasant sensations in the end. I ought to say
somewhere--and I know of no better place than this--that the habit of
eating between our regular meals, even the smallest thing whatever; is
of very mischievous tendency; and this for several reasons. First--the
stomach needs its seasons of entire rest; but those persons who eat
between their meals seldom give any rest to their stomachs, except
during the night. Secondly--eating things in this way injures the
general appetite. Thirdly--the habit is apt to increase in strength,
and is difficult to break. Fourthly--it does not afford relief, except
for a very short time. On the contrary, as I have already intimated, it
increases the trouble in the end.
This eating of such simple things, I have said, is quite bad enough;
but there are errors which are worse. Such is the habit of taking an
extra cup of tea or coffee--extra, either as respects the number of
cups or the strength. Now tea and coffee-and sometimes either of them--
are very apt to afford, like eating a little food, a temporary relief.
Indeed, the sufferer often gains so long a respite from her sufferings,
that the narcotic beverage which she takes is supposed to be the very
medicine needed, and the very one adapted to her case. The like
erroneous conclusion is often made after using, with the same apparent
good effect, certain hot herb teas. Yet, I repeat it, such medicinal
mixtures usually--perhaps I should say always--aggravate the complaint
in the end, by deranging still more the powers and functions of the
stomach, and debilitating still more the cerebral and nervous system.
Different and various are the external applications made to the head,
in these circumstances; but all, usually, with the same success; they
only produce a little temporary relief. The same may be said of the use
of smelling bottles--containing, as I believe they usually do, ammonia
or hartshorn, cologne water, camphor, &c. The manner in which these
operate to produce mischief, is, however, very different from that of
the former. They irritate the nasal membrane, and dry it, if they do
not slowly destroy its sensibility. They also, in some way, affect
seriously the tender brain. In any event, they ought seldom to be used
by the sick or the well. Nor is this all. They are _inhaled_--to
irritate and injure the lining membrane of the lungs.
Trifling as it may seem to many, I never find that a young woman keeps
a cologne bottle in her dressing room, or a smelling bottle about her--
or perfumes her clothes--or is in the habit of eating, every now and
then, a little coriander, or fennel, or cloves, or cinnamon--without
trembling for her safety. Persisting long in this habit, she will as
inevitably injure her brain and nervous system, her lungs or her
stomach--ay, and her teeth too--as she continues the habit. I never
knew a young woman who had used any of these things, year after year,
for a long series of years, whose system was not already suffering
therefrom; and if I were fond of giving or receiving challenges, I
should not hesitate to challenge the whole world to produce a single
instance of the kind. In the very nature of things it cannot be. Such
persons may tell us they are well, when we make an attack upon their
habits; but take them when off their guard, and we hear, at times,
quite a different story.
That they are very often the dupes of the quacks and quackery with
which our age abounds--or at least, that they take many of the pills,
and cough drops, and bitters, and panaceas of the day--I will not
believe. Much as they err to their own destruction, I trust they have
not yet sunk so low as this.
CHAPTER XXIX.
TAKING CARE OF THE SICK.
1. As society now is, there is danger that the number of our young
women who fall into a state of indifference, not to say absolute
disgust, with the world and with life, will greatly increase, unless
the sex can be led, by an improved course of education, to exercise
more of that active sympathy with suffering which prompts to assist in
relieving it.
What physician has not, again and again, seen all his efforts fail to
do any good, because not sustained by the labors of a skilful,
intelligent, faithful and persevering nurse? This condition is one of
the most trying that can befall him; and yet, trying as it is, it is
his very frequent lot.
Let it not be objected, that the introduction of the young to the sick
room will expose them, unnecessarily, either to contagion or the
breathing of bad air. For as to contagion, there is probably much less
of it in the world than many suppose. But whether there is less or more
danger, the best way to do, as the world is now situated, is, to inure
ourselves, gradually, to disease. There are in New York and
Philadelphia, many very aged persons, who have been employed as
professional attendants of the sick during all the visitations of those
cities with yellow fever and cholera, who have yet never taken either
of those diseases.
It is our fear of taking disease, very often, which makes us take it.
The sum total of the danger to the community, as a community, of
contracting even contagious disease, will actually be much lessened,
rather than increased, by all our young females being trained in the
art and practice of nursing the sick. And the same might be said of the
danger from bad air; because, the better the nurse is--that is, the
more thoroughly and scientifically she understands her profession--the
more pains will be taken in regard to ventilating, both the rooms of
the sick and of those who are healthy.
"I was sick and ye visited me," is represented, moreover, by the Judge
of all the earth, as one of the grounds--not of salvation from sin--but
of final reward in the world of spirits. But can any one believe our
Saviour here means those empty, hollow-hearted visits now so common
among us?--just going, I mean, to a sick neighbor's door, and asking
how she does--or peradventure stepping in, only to stare at the
sufferer, and with a half suppressed breath and a sigh, to hope to
comfort her by wishing she may ultimately recover? No such thing. The
Saviour, by visiting the sick, meant those kind and valuable offices
which are worthy of the name; especially, when performed by the kind
and gentle hand of a lovely, intelligent, benevolent and pious woman.
Oh, young woman! hadst thou but a glimpse of one half the angelic
offices in thy power, how wouldst thou labor and pray for those
qualities and that education, which would enable thee to act up to the
dignity of thy nature, in the sight of God, angels and men! How wouldst
thou labor to accomplish thy noble destiny.
CHAPTER XXX.
INTELLECTUAL IMPROVEMENT.
5. Conversation, like every thing else under the sun, should have its
time and place. It is as wrong to converse when we ought to read, or
study, or labor, or play, as it is to read or play when we ought to
converse. Social life has a great many vacancies, as it were, which
good, and sprightly, and well chosen conversation should fill up.
My reply is, that though our taste is not to be turned out of doors,
wholly, it is, nevertheless, a very imperfect guide, and needs
correction. Our intellect, like our moral and physical likes and
dislikes, is, as I have elsewhere said, perverted by the fall. I will
not say that our moral, intellectual and physical tastes are perverted
in an equal degree; for I do not think so. Still there is a perversion,
greater or less, of the whole man--in all his functions, faculties and
affections. As a general rule, when left to our own course, we choose
that food, for body, mind and soul, which, though it may be pleasant at
first, is bitter afterwards. "There is a way which seemeth right unto a
man, but the end thereof is death."
Still it may be said--If our intellectual tastes are perverted, how are
they to be set right? Why not, I ask, in the same way that our moral
taste is--by the word and truth of God? "To the law and to the
testimony."
It is not for parents, however, that I am now writing; but for those
whose taste, by the aid or neglect of parents, is already formed. If
formed on the basis of the word and truth of God--if they are inclined
to prefer the best books and reject the worst--then all is well but if
not, then the work of self-education is, in this respect, to set that
right which has hitherto been wrong.
Hardly any thing can be of greater importance in this matter, than the
assistance of a friend, in whom we can confide, in making our
selection. This is as necessary in regard to newspapers, as to books.
She who reads newspapers, indiscriminately, will derive little benefit
from them; as her head will be filled with such a mixture of truth and
falsehood, and wisdom and folly, as will be likely to do her more harm
than good.
Few will read to advantage, who have not their set hours for reading.
It is true, that unforeseen circumstances may, at times, break in upon
our arrangement, and impede our progress in knowledge; but if we have
no arrangement or system at all, we shall find our progress impeded
still more.
Do not read too much. The world is almost deluged with books. Not only
see that your selection is as it should be, in regard to the character
of the books, but beware of having too many of them. A few, well read
and understood, will be more valuable.
I wish, with all my heart, that people could get rid of the idea, that
there should be one style for conversation, and another for writing.
Here is the stumbling-stone on which youth of both sexes have been
stumbling, time immemorial; and on which, I fear, many will be likely
to stumble for some time to come.
Could they get rid of this strange belief--could they perceive, most
clearly, that composition is nothing more than putting our thoughts on
paper, instead of delivering them by word of mouth--and that
conversation is nothing less than composition, except that the words
are written as it were in the air, instead of being placed on a sheet
of paper--how soon would the complaints about the tediousness of
composition cease to be heard. Some young women, of sixteen, or
eighteen, or twenty years of age, appear to regard letter-writing as
childish. They talk of having once been so foolish as to be addicted to
the practice; but as having now outgrown it. Such persons have no
conception of the vast importance of this species of composition, as an
aid to correct thinking and correct writing. The more we think, the
more and better we are able to think; and the more we write, the more
thoughts we have which we wish to put down.
But here, again, there has been great error. Journals have usually
consisted of the driest details, or exteriors of events. The young
should be encouraged to record their feelings in them; their hopes and
fears--their anticipations and their regrets--their joys and their
sorrows--their repentances and their resolutions. Such journals, with
old and young, could not fail to advance the intellect, even if they
should not improve the heart.
The value of music, to soothe the feelings and cast out the evil
spirits which haunt the path of human life, has never yet received that
measure of attention which it deserves. Even in those parts of
continental Europe, where all the peasants sing, and are accustomed to
fill the air with their cheerful and harmonious voices as they go forth
to prosecute their daily tasks, no less than in their families--even
there, I say, the full power and value of music are not understood.
They make it, by far too much, a sort of sensual gratification. Let it
be redeemed, for a better and a nobler purpose. Let it become a
companion of science and literature, as well as of industry and of
virtue--and of religion, still more than all.
As for concerts, and parties of all sorts, attended as they usually are
in the evening, there are many objections to them--though, as society
is now regulated, it may not be best to denounce them altogether. Home
is the proper place for young women, as well as for other honest
people, after dark; at least this ought to be the general rule.
Do not pursue too many studies at once: it is the most useless thing
that can be done. Your knowledge, should you get any, would in that way
be confused and indefinite, instead of being clear, and practical, and
useful to you. I would never pursue more than one or two leading
sciences at one time; and in general, I think that one is better than
more. If you pursue more than one, let them be such as are related; as
geography and history.
Let me say, in closing this chapter, that the great end of all
intellectual culture, is to teach the art of _thinking, and of
_thinking right_. To learn to think, merely, is to rise only one
degree above the brute creation. To learn to think _well_,
however, is noble; worthy of the dignity of human nature, and of the
Author of that nature.
CHAPTER XXXI.
SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT.
Were there but a single individual in the wide world, that individual,
with the laws that woman now has to guide her--laws internal and
external, natural and revealed--would be susceptible of endless and
illimitable improvement. She might make advances every day--and it
would he her duty to do so--upward toward the throne of God, and
towards the perfection of him who occupies it.
How interesting, too, the relation between a wise and good father, and
a virtuous and affectionate daughter! I am most struck, however, with
this relation--and most reminded of the divine goodness in its
institution--when I see a daughter ministering to the wants, moral and
physical, of a very aged relative, parent or grandparent; one who is
superannuated or sick.
There are, in civilized society--and above all, where the rays of the
blessed gospel of the Son of God have been let in--scenes on which
angels themselves might delight to gaze, and on which I have no doubt
they do gaze with the most intense delight. Would that such scenes were
still more frequent! Would that filial love was always what it should
be, instead of degenerating into cold formalities.
"How have I been charmed;" says Addison, "to see one of the most
beauteous women the age has produced, kneeling to put on an old man's
slipper." And so have I. It is a sight which revives one's hopes of
fallen nature. No matter if the infirmities of the parent are the
consequences of his own folly, vice and crime, the same soft hand is
still employed, day after day--and the same countenance is lighted up
with a smile, at being able thus to employ it.
But when to the tenderest love on the part of a young woman in this
relation, and to the kindest efforts to promote the temporal happiness
and comfort of those whom she holds dear is joined a love for the mind
and soul; when every opportunity, is laid hold of with eagerness, to
inform, and improve, and elevate--and this, too, though the subject of
her labor is the most miserable wreck of humanity of which we can
conceive; when to works of love are added the warmest prayers, at the
bedside and elsewhere, for Almighty aid and favor; the interest of the
scene is indescribable. It needs a more than mortal pen or pencil to
portray it.
I have seen the care of a large family devolve, by the death of the
mother, upon the elder daughter. Instead of her being disheartened at
all, I have known her to go forward in the pathway of duty--sensible,
at the same time, of her dependence on her Heavenly Father--and not
only instruct the other children, but "train them up," in same good
degree, "in the way they should go."
Do you think I respected or loved this young woman the less, because
she was thus early a house--keeper, a matron, and a mother? Do you
think I esteemed her the less, because--exclusive of the common school
--she had no seminary of instruction? Her education was a thousand times
more valuable than that of the fashionable routine of the schools,
without the kind of discipline she had. A world whose females were all
educated in the family schools--and especially in the school of
affliction, and poverty, and hardship--would be incomparably a better
world than one whose young women should "wear soft clothing," and live
in "kings' courts"--who should be educated by merely fashionable
mothers, amid ease and abundance, and "finished" at the institute or
the boarding school.
Let every young woman whose eye meets these paragraphs, rejoice, if she
has younger brothers or sisters--or even if she has brothers or sisters
at all. The younger may do something for the older, as well as the
older much for the younger. And if she is without either, there are
probably other and remoter relatives for whom something may be done.
If young women would have the spirit of our Lord and Saviour--or if
they would be instruments in his hands of hastening the glad day of his
more complete reign on the earth and in the hearts of his intelligent
family--they must strive to come up to this love of the human family.
It is to elevate them to this love, I again say, that the family
institution, with all the interesting relations which grow out of it,
was instituted. When it has accomplished this work, though it will not
cease to be valuable, in the abstract, it will be less valuable
relatively--because it will absorb a smaller proportion of our thoughts
and affections, and leave a larger proportion for the world in general,
and its Creator.
1. Never think for one moment of the society of any other than a good
man. Whatever may be his extrinsic endowments--wit, beauty, talent,
rank, property or prospects--all should be as nothing to you, unless
his character is what it should be. Of course, I am not encouraging you
to look for angelic perfection or purity on this earth; but do not make
too many allowances, on the other hand, for frailty. A close
examination, as with the microscope, will disclose irregularity and
roughness on the most polished or smooth surface: how then will that
surface appear which is uneven without the microscope? If it were
possible for your associate for life to come apparently near celestial
purity and excellence, a closer acquaintance would, most undoubtedly,
convince you that he was of terrestrial origin. Do the best you can,
therefore, and you will do ill enough.
Does your friend hate nothing so much as his own thoughts and
reflections? Does he dread, also, like the cholera or the plague, all
efforts at mental or moral improvement? Does he hate improving
conversation--and above all, those books and associates which have the
improvement and elevation of the body and spirit, for their great and
leading object? And have you a different taste--entirely so? Do you
live--do you eat, drink, sleep, wake, exercise, dress, labor, play,
converse, read, and think, and pray that you may become wiser, and
better, and holier?
Have nothing to do, above all, with those who despise your sex. There
is a large number of young men--much larger, indeed, than you may be
aware, who have caught the spirit, not to say sentiments, of Byron, in
regard to woman.
They have _caught_ them, I say; but this, perhaps, is not so. I
will only say they _have_ them. I know not how, as a general fact,
they came by them. I can only say that they are often very early
imbibed; and that they grow with their growth, and strengthen with
their strength. Would to Heaven this utter skepticism in regard to
female worth and purity could be removed; or rather prevented. It is
the bane of social life--as I could show, were I disposed to do so, by
a thousand illustrations.
Beware, then--I beseech you, beware--of the young man who is ever
prating about the innate worthlessness, not to say vice, of your sex. I
do not say, reject him forever, simply on suspicion; for that would be
to go to the other extreme. But though I have admitted that there may
possibly be exceptions in regard to the general rule I have laid down,
I also insist that they are rare. Therefore, I again say, be wary in
forming your friendships--and especially so, in suffering them to
become more and more intimate.
Parents may prevent this mistake in young women, if they will. The
mother, at least, can prevent it. Where mothers manage the matter as it
ought to be managed, you will not find daughters, on going into
company, so deeply interested in these matters that nothing seems so to
loosen the tongue, light up the countenance, and brighten the eye, as
conversation about the latest engagements and marriages, and nothing so
much or so quickly interest them in a newspaper, even a religious one,
and that, too, on the Sabbath, as the list of marriages. Alas! do
mothers or daughters know what are the practical common sense
inferences from this conduct, where it greatly abounds.
CHAPTER XXXII.
MORAL PROGRESS.
And yet, if you examine closely the matter, you will find that much of
all this is the result of circumstances. They possess, by inheritance,
a happy temper--or they are in circumstances which make virtue easy to
them.
But the spirit and genius of Christianity require a great deal more
than mere inoffensiveness--though that is, of itself, certainly, a
great deal. They require continual progress from glory to glory. But
this progress can only be made amid self-denial and cross-taking.
"Whoso taketh not up his cross," daily and hourly, is not a true
disciple of the great Teacher. It is even through "much tribulation"
only, that we can enter into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour.
Young woman, should it be your lot to belong to one of these happy and
excellent families--for I do not deny that they are among our best
people, after all, though they are very far from having, as yet, come
up to the self-denying, self-sacrificing spirit of the Lord that bought
them, and become willing to be poor, and to suffer not a little want of
time, money, &c. for even their own apparent necessities, temporal or
spiritual--I say, if in the providence of God, you have been accustomed
to see almost the whole time and labor of a family, with the avails of
a handsome, or at least respectable property, used up year after year
by that family, in eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and dressing
_comfortably_--in mere passive enjoyment, in one word--while the
blessedness of active enjoyment, in the doing of good to others, has
been hardly known--be it yours to break the chain that binds this
circle of selfishness, and go forth to the work of impoverishing
yourself, as did your Lord and Master. Think not to make any
considerable moral progress, otherwise! The soul must have food, as
well as the body. This continual indulgence of the body, while the soul
is unfed, or only fed just enough to keep it from starving, will never
do for you. If you yield to the influence of this fashionable kind of
excellence, and strive not to rise higher, I will not say that you will
live to little purpose; but I will say, that you will have but very
little of real, valuable, immortal life, till you pass beyond the
bounds of time and space. Whereas, you ought to begin your heaven here.
For "this is the will of God, even your sanctification;" and it was the
prayer of Paul concerning some to whom he wrote--"The God of peace
sanctify you wholly."
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